Thanksgiving part 1

Joe didn't join us. His loss! My nephew Mike wasn't there either. He was working because they've extended the fire season due to the dry warm weather we've had lately. :( I missed Mike!

Uncle Jim and Aunt June's sons, Barry and Todd, were there with their wives, Karen and Judy. Aunt June's niece Nancy was there with her husband Bob and their son Daine. My mom rode up with my sister Sherrie and her husband Bruce. We were about 30 minutes late from sleeping so late but my nephew Chris was even later because he had to cross the Bay Bridge and it was jammed. Eric hasn't been feeling well so I was worried about how he was going to do. He perked up when Daine started talking to him about video games. They spent about an hour before dinner deep in conversation about Daine's Nintendo hand-held game device.

Nancy hasn't been to Thanksgiving for a couple of years. When I saw she was sitting at the kids table in the living room, I joined her. So Todd and Judy joined us and so did Bob and Eric. They had to steal a table setting and chair from the main table to do it. LOL The two youngest family members there sat at the grown-up table. tee hee!

The acoustics in the house are interesting. Judy was telling funny stories and we kept laughing so hard that the people at the grown-up table kept yelling at us to hold it down or we wouldn't get dessert!

One funny story Todd told is how he went into a co-worker's office to find that she'd come across my website somehow and liked my CD cover picture so much that she's using it for wallpaper. She had no idea I was Todd's cousin. He says he told her he knows me, he knows me very well. He says he has believed everything I ever told him as fact. I said, "Oh no!" and Eric told Todd we have a nice rubber room waiting for him. lol

I used the new 4.1 megapixel camera Eric got from the discontinued products website and I'm thinking I know why they discontinued this camera. The pictures are muddy looking.

Somehow I managed to miss my sister and Uncle Jim in the pictures. :(

Click the thumbnails to see them bigger.

	Barry carves the turkey while Aunt June makes gravy Sapporo makes sure any turkey that drops gets cleaned up right away.
	Sweet Sapporo
	Eric and Todd are ready for food!
	What a feast! We were truly grateful. It all tasted wonderful! Even that troublesome wild rice casserole!
	Visiting after the feast My mom, aunt June and Karen sip coffee and chat as we prepare for our hike.

Thanksgiving part 3 - after the hike

	Time for dessert! Fresh cream was being whipped when this was taken.
	Where are the guys? There they are! Barry, Daine, Eric and Bob (kneeling) are intently watching Todd do something. What could it be?
	Oh, they're watching Todd fight forest fires! Todd works for the US Department of Forestry and fights forest fires every year. He must love his work to have a game to do more of it!
	Todd snuggles Sapporo for one last time.
	Sapporo understands Todd is leaving. She's very sad.

Thanksgiving part 2 - the hike up the hill

Following our usual tradition, those who were willing and able climbed to the top of Twin Peaks that serves as my Aunt & Uncle's back yard. This year wasn't crystal clear as most years have been because a rainstorm was rolling in. It wasn't as cold as usual either, so that was a bonus! We usually come back with numb faces from the wind. We could clearly see the bay and the lights around it until about half-way up when we began to enter the clouds. It's only about 1/4 of a mile from the back door to the peak, but most of that is pretty steep. My back was aching so much at the road 3/4 of the way up that I said I was stopping. But after we took pictures there, suddenly the ache subsided and I decided to do the whole hill. Last year Barry pushed me up the last 20 feet or so but this year I did it completely on my own steam without wheezing! YAY!

Todd's dog Sapporo was hoping to find gophers and was checking out all the gopher holes she could find. She's noticeably less energetic this year. I had the distinct impression this is the last year she'll be with us. That's so sad. Todd got her 10 years ago when he was losing cats to the wilds of the Cascades mountains where he lives and decided to have a dog instead. His neighbor's dog had a litter of puppies and he just bonded with Sapporo from the start. He didn't know how to raise dogs so Sapporo was raised like a cat. She's such a sweet snuggly girl! Because Todd didn't know anything about dogs, he didn't know about heartworm. She nearly died from that when she was a few years old. Aunt June took her to the vet in SF and kept her as they cured her over a period of months. Then two years ago, she was wandering around on his land in the daytime when Todd heard her screaming and ran to her aid. He found her head ripped open in several places. From her wounds, the vet said she'd been attacked by a bobcat. He stopped letting her wander after that. Now she has a large cyst somewhere and while Todd and Judy have a four week trip to Minnesota, Aunt June will take her to the vet to see about that. I hope curing the cyst will be simple and give her more years. I'm not sure how long medium-sized mixed breed dogs live. I'm sure the heartworm scars can't help her life expectancy any. In the pictures I took of him saying goodbye to her before they left for the airport, I had a dreadful feeling that these will be the last photos of them together. I hope that feeling is wrong.

	1/3 of the way up the hill - with flash
	The Willing and Able 2/3 of the way up the hill. A nice man was making the climb by himself and offered to take the whole group of us when he saw me snapping a picture of the others. We had entered the lower cloud layer here.
	Top of the hill! Todd sits on the summit marker trying to change his camera settings while Judy holds the flashlight. I'm not sure what Karen is doing...
	Daine looks at the lights while Sapporo checks all the gopher holes. The top of the hill was in the clouds and it was windy up there!
	It was clear below the clouds. Still windy, though.