Let's talk Turkey and Deer

I love Thanksgiving!!  I love all things about Thanksgiving.  The leaves.  The concentration on thankfulness.  Pumpkin.  Stuffing.  Gravy.  Family.  Yup, I love it all!!  We found out that Mark is working the day shift on Thanksgiving day.  Bummer.  So we do what the Brooks fam does best, Plan B, eat really late and stay up late.  Only, thankfully, one of the guys who isn't married and doesn't have family near by, offered to work half of Mark's day shift, meaning that he could come home at noon.  YAY!!  We have wonderful friends who live in Baltimore, which is a bit under an hour from our house, and they were not going home to Maine for Thanksgiving either, so Thanksgiving Day together is what we all decided would be perfection!  Mike and Pam came not too soon before Mark got home for the afternoon and we were soon in full laughter mode with Mike and Mark recounting days from working together as detectives in the Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit, formerly known as CID.  I always know that times that we spend with these two will be filled with fun and laughter and stories that I have never heard before.  This gather did not disappoint.  Mike told a story about using his smoking-with-a-scum-bag-tactic which turned into Mike chasing scum bag through the streets of Skowhegan.  All's well that ends well, but ohmyword, my sides hurt so bad from laughing.  The turkey was delish, as were all the sides, though I guess I added too much water to the stuffing which ended up just being very soggy bread even when it was in the oven three times the allotted amount and I forgot to put the cranberry sauce on the table!!  Who forgets the cranberry?!?!  But gravy is my fav part of the meal, I didn't forget that.  We had cookies, pies and cherry cheesecake (made by Julia) for dessert.  Okay...maybe chocolate cream pie is my favorite part of the meal....

Mike and Pam

Mmm!  Turkey!

Now, that's a couple of crazy girls!!

I'm thankful for this guy. 

OOooo!  The dessert!

 This is our Thankfulness Tree.  If you visited our house anytime during November, you saw this and even put a leaf on the tree.  Before you start thinking that I'm amazingly creative, please know that I stole this idea (and many more of my "ideas") from Pinterest.  Each leaf has something the author was thankful for.  They ranged from our house and church to chocolate and coffee.  Yeah, I wrote the coffee one.  And maybe even the chocolate one.  I love this tree.  In the daily grind the little things get lost.  And there are a lot of little things to be thankful for. 

Right before Thanksgiving we made a last minute decision to go to Maine the day after Thanksgiving.  Last minute meaning 72 hours prior.  A whole lot of ready-or-not-here-we-come!!!  It's how we roll.  The main reason we headed to Maine is for Julia to hunt.  You see, in the whole big Brooks family hunting is as important as Thanksgiving itself.  Maybe even more so.  I'm a hunting widow for the entire month of November.  I'm not alone.  All my friends are too.  Instead of whining and complaining that when our hubbies are not at work they are in the woods, we take full advantage of catching up with each other with out expectations of dinners at home.  In full disclosure, I do a bit of both.  Anyway...when a kid is 10 they can hunt with an adult with a loaded weapon and shoot a deer.  Yup.  Shoot.  Dead.  Eat.  Yuck.  Let me tell ya a story about my Julia.  She loves, and has loved ever since she could, pink and sequins.  The sparkly-er the better.  One day she was all dressed in her dress up Cinderella wedding dress.  I'm talking shoes, gloves and veil.  Mark and his brother come into the house talking about giving the youngest nephew his gun.  That's the Brooks boy rite of passage.  They turn 10, they get a gun from their uncles and grandfather.  So, Cinderella Julia says, "Daddy, when I'm 10, you're gonna get me a gun and I'm gonna shoot a dee-ah (cuz that's how you say deer in Maine) with those boys!!!"  She has never waivered from either of those ideas...the sparkly or the hunting.  She turned 10 and here she is with the Brooks Boys and her gun.  This is at the lake in St. Albans right before we moved to Carlisle in July 2012.

Look at that smile!!

Proud daddy

Kevin, Mark, Richard, Foster & Randy with the 10 year old!!

So...fast forward about a year and a half, we couldn't sneak back to Maine the fall of 2012 due to school, and my girl is headed out in the woods with that gun.

What a crew!!!

Though she didn't see anything, she had a blast.  Spending the night at camp was probably her highlight but I know she loves being outside.  She always has loved trekking through the woods with Mark during hunting season.  The first time she went with him, she was so little, I'm thinking she was 6 probably.  Mark has his doubts that she would last long, but she kept up with him, was silent, and Mark said that every time he turned around, she had a huge grin on her face.  So while I prefer a warm fire, I'm glad that the rest of my fam loves hunting.