Why I love Thanksgiving!

And I'm back!  With NaNoWriMo and Thanksgiving Weekend over, I'm going to try and get back to posting regularly.  But for now, why I love Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving (in the USA at least) is a time of the year marked by a bipolar nature.  It has become a time where most families spend time together, sharing a meal, and (supposedly) being thankful for the good things in their lives, while at the same time, many corporations are trying to get a jump start on "Black Friday" by opening on Thanksgiving Day so people can buy more stuff during the madness that ensues.

I have (almost) always been lucky to be able to spend the entire weekend with my extended family.  While some things have changed over the course of my life, my mother's family has spent every Thanksgiving up in Oneonta, New York to stay at a cabin my grandfather built for longer than I've been alive.  It has given me the chance to make a lot of good memories with my family, especially since the cabin sits on over 300 acres of forest.  We've been able to play flash light tag and capture the flag together.  We've had target practice using rifles and bow and arrow together.  We've built 'forts' out of sticks and logs together.  We've found spotted newts and toads and frogs and snakes together.  We've ridden trike-bikes together.  We've made pumpkin doughnuts and cookies together.  We've built snowmen together.

These are the things that always made Thanksgiving fun.  Every year I look forward to seeing my family and spending time with them.  Now that most of my cousins are adults, we have started cooking a meal for our aunts and uncles.  We light off fireworks and built bonfires and play complex board and card games.  We see movies and talk about books and even dote upon our baby second cousin.  And I hope that I get to do these things for many more years to come.