Sunday, January 25, 2009
Thankful for Family!
We spent a wonderful Thanksgiving with family. Since we had decided to travel to North Dakota, I arranged to visit some chapters along the way—so Mom, Bob and I left Tuesday morning, stopped in East Grand Forks, and then stayed in Devils Lake that evening. 
Sandy had mentioned the Seafood buffet at the Casino at Devils Lake—so we decided to go there. They had a wonderful buffet—with lots of king crab legs—not the little tiny ones that are so hard to eat!
After a nice visit with the chapter advisor and several students, we went on up to Sandy and Al’s. After checking into the motel, we went to their favorite Pizza place for supper and then headed over to their house to start processing deer. This is becoming an annual event to process venison over Thanksgiving. We got some ready for jerky and cut and wrapped up some steaks.
We went down to Kevin’s in Minot for Thanksgiving. Ross and Richard and Kara and Paul had driven over on Wed evening and stayed overnight at LeAnn’s, so they met us there. We had a wonderful meal—with three kinds of meat (Turkey, ham and prime rib) and lots of extras and we had a wonderful time. It’s always so nice to spend time with that group, because they like to laugh and tell stories. We did the gift exchange where you can ‘steal’ gifts from each other and had a lot of laughs.
We drove back to Bottineau that evening, Kara and I ran over to the store to get some snacks and we found a whole row of Christmas decorations that played songs and danced around—like Santa/reindeer/snowmen with saxophones. Kara said “I’ll take the top row, you take the bottom and let’s see if we can get them all playing at the same time” And we did pretty well—it was really noisy!
Then we got in a game of cards and hit the sack so we would be ready for meat processing the next two days. And process meat we did! We ground burger, made sausage, stuffed the little link thingys, kept the dehydrator going steady, butchered a lamb, and Paul even hunted, although he didn’t see anything. Plus everyone had to play on Sandy and Al’s new Wii—we set some new records for them to beat.
Sunday, we all went different directions to head for home—we took the northern route, the kids all went to Grand Forks where they separated and went their own ways. We all got home between 7:30-8:30 pm, with coolers full of meat—we should be set for the winter!
Sandy had mentioned the Seafood buffet at the Casino at Devils Lake—so we decided to go there. They had a wonderful buffet—with lots of king crab legs—not the little tiny ones that are so hard to eat!After a nice visit with the chapter advisor and several students, we went on up to Sandy and Al’s. After checking into the motel, we went to their favorite Pizza place for supper and then headed over to their house to start processing deer. This is becoming an annual event to process venison over Thanksgiving. We got some ready for jerky and cut and wrapped up some steaks.
We went down to Kevin’s in Minot for Thanksgiving. Ross and Richard and Kara and Paul had driven over on Wed evening and stayed overnight at LeAnn’s, so they met us there. We had a wonderful meal—with three kinds of meat (Turkey, ham and prime rib) and lots of extras and we had a wonderful time. It’s always so nice to spend time with that group, because they like to laugh and tell stories. We did the gift exchange where you can ‘steal’ gifts from each other and had a lot of laughs.We drove back to Bottineau that evening, Kara and I ran over to the store to get some snacks and we found a whole row of Christmas decorations that played songs and danced around—like Santa/reindeer/snowmen with saxophones. Kara said “I’ll take the top row, you take the bottom and let’s see if we can get them all playing at the same time” And we did pretty well—it was really noisy!
Then we got in a game of cards and hit the sack so we would be ready for meat processing the next two days. And process meat we did! We ground burger, made sausage, stuffed the little link thingys, kept the dehydrator going steady, butchered a lamb, and Paul even hunted, although he didn’t see anything. Plus everyone had to play on Sandy and Al’s new Wii—we set some new records for them to beat.Sunday, we all went different directions to head for home—we took the northern route, the kids all went to Grand Forks where they separated and went their own ways. We all got home between 7:30-8:30 pm, with coolers full of meat—we should be set for the winter!
# posted by bjm @ 6:11 AM 
