Thanksgiving Comes Early in Sanford

A few weeks ago, Mom asked if we were going to Sanford for Thanksgiving. I told her that we were not because I'd heard that Aunt Cathy and Uncle Dave had other plans, and that Susan invited a friend to come stay with us. Well, apparently I let the cat out of the bag. Mom was able to deduce that Cathy and Dave were heading to Ohio - this was supposed to be a big surprise. Oops.

Since they were planning to be gone on Thanksgiving, Cathy, Dave, and their Florida sibling's families decided to have Thanksgiving in Sanford today, and they were kind enough to invite us to join them.

We drove up Saturday and spent the night at the B&B. Today, we drove over to Nikki and Ron's house for dinner. Our mission was to bring the dinner roll's, so we stopped at Publix on the way over.

We arrived around 1:00PM. We quickly found the dart board on the back patio and started playing 301. Dave beat me and Susan twice. Then Ron and Zak started playing and showed us how it's really done. Ron introduced me to the 'kegerator'. He converted a normal refrigerator into a keg-holding refrigerator, complete with a tap sticking out the front; pretty cool.

The guests soon converged in the living room around the Nintendo Wii. This was a little surprising, since there were football games to be seen, but no one seemed interested in football at the time. We loaded a miniature golf game and started playing 18 holes. Andrew was much more entertained by seeing shots end up in the water than shots going into the hole. There's a lesson we should all take while playing golf for real. :)

Then it was time to eat. Nikki cooked the turkey and stuffing. Cathy made potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberry stuff, noodle/cabbage stuff (haluski?), and the pumpkin pies. Jen made a green bean casserole. Everything was fabulous!

After dinner, Andrew and I broke out the whipped cream and pumpkin pie. Ummmm.

Eventually, folks started to leave, but I wanted to see how Guitar Hero worked, so Nikki and Ron pulled out the Wii guitars and loaded the game. They demonstrated the game for us, then Susan and I gave it a try. For those of you who haven't seen it in action, Guitar Hero let's you join a rock band and go on tour. You can play guitar, bass, or drums. There are probably 50 songs you can choose to play. As the music plays, the 'notes' slide toward you on the screen. The 'notes' correspond to the five colored buttons on the guitar frets. You must strum the guitar at the right moment and press the correct buttons, otherwise you will miss notes. If you miss enough notes, the crowd will boo you off the stage.

We started off at the Beginner level, simply strumming the guitar to the beat. Before long, we moved up to Easy then Medium. What an addicting game that is. Nikki and Ron finally kicked us out around 10:00PM (not really; I think they subtly reminded us that they had to work on Monday morning and we took the hint).