I have to say I am getting better and slowly learning the advantage of actually trying to hit the ball rather than running and trying to dodge it. I was voted MVP by my team when I scored the winning point! (Much to me and my team's surprise). We even had one dry night where we all sang around the campfire to Uncle Doug's guitar songs! We sang new ones I had requested before the trip that he had practiced! One of the highlights of our trip is definitely all the awesome food we eat over the course of 4 days. This year Sallye made her new famous drink- "Cable Car Martinis!" We even drank them out of fancy martini glasses rimmed with cinammon sugar..Mmmm...hearing from her that this was her favorite treat during their trip to San Francisco I decided I should try one and yow were they strong!
Let's just say after all the ladies had a couple while cooking Thanksgiving, it was a miracle we had Thanksgiving dinner at all! Even Mema got up there with them and sang and danced away with them in the kitchen. Luckily, there were enough microphones to go around (spoons and basting brushes) so everyone could sing! We all were cracking up so hard and thankfully, Karl had the turkey under control and grabbed in just in time!
He and Mom tried a new recipe for the turkey this year which involved turning the turkey upside down to let the juices get to the breast meat and man did it work! We had the juiciest turkey ever so something worked! We sure missed Riane this year- she couldn't make the trip all the way from London but she and her friends made their own T-day feast in London! (thanks to grocery shopping at the Americanized Whole Foods in London!)
And as if that wasn't enough food to last us a week, we couldn't wait for "Mexican night!" We chowed down on the infamous bean rolls and chalupas and definitely got our fix before heading back to California. Topped off by Sallye's famous margaritas and we were set!
During the day in the morning after breakfast we all went walking around the neighborhood and down to the ricer. We even took Riley the "Crazy Dog" out for a walk and she once again decided it would be more fun to walk me so I was basically holding on for dear life the entire time. I let her off the leash ONCE and she thought she could out run an entire family of deer- nice try Riley! She got her exercise, that's for sure.
Karl and the guys kept the fires burning in both living rooms and we were cozy playing games all night long....into the wee hours. I was so happy to see my family and glad we keep our once a year tradition of getting together. Friends and family is what life is all about!
