I’m filing this report late, but better late than never. For Thanksgiving, we always make the trek out to Onida for the actual holiday. What was different is that since Katie has school this year, we can’t ditch out as early on the Wednesday before, so we ended up getting into town about 10pm. On Thursday, we made it over to Grandma Becky’s for the usual Thanksgiving fare – turkey, ham, stuffing, potatoes, corn, pumpkin pie – the two things that are unique about the Yackley Thanksgiving dinner are Fran’s Taco Salad and Beth’s Strawberry Pie. Those are two dishes that come with all Yackley get-togethers.
We hung out and relished in the size of our bellies and watched the Detroit Lions lose for the 99th time in the last 100 Thanksgiving games (or so it seems). Why do they get to play on Thanksgiving every year again? Anyway, I digress. I took the girls for a long ride in the car to get them to sleep and we managed to drive through some of the areas around Pierre that overlook the river, so that was cool. That evening we celebrated Taydon and Bryson’s 3rd and 1st birthdays respectively. With all 9 grandkids under 6 there, it gets to be a pretty lively scene. Especially with new toys to play with. Tina made a volcano cake which was a hit with all party-goers.
On Friday, we didn’t get up early to cash in on the deals, but Jess and Tina were brave (crazy) enough to get on the road by 3:15 to get down to Pierre for the big sales. They each picked up a new TV, so it must’ve been worth the early rise. That morning we hung out and I spent time bothering Becky’s cousin Nate and his crew of house framers as they made good progress on Brandon’s new house, which is located next down to his parents. I even got to help raise a wall, so I feel like a real construction worker now. It turned out to be beautiful day, so I took the kids over to the school park to play for a while. In the late afternoon, we headed down to Pierre to get ready for their annual holiday lights parade. First, we stopped at Somer’s new pimped out bank and saw her executives watching football in their new conference room. Then we headed to the State Capitol building which once again had Christmas Trees throughout the building. This one featured a bonus that one of the trees was decorated by Grandma Nola. We parked at the Capitol to watch the parade, and I noticed a unique feature of this parade. Instead of the horses being the last thing in the parade (so the street sweeper can clean up afterwards), the horses and carriages were the first thing in this parade. I chalk it up to the rodeo atmosphere and the fact that so many people have horses around there. There were 2-3x as many horses as in a normal parade.
The girls ended up making out quite well – they filled a gallon ice cream pail all the way to the top with their candy foraging. Once we made it back to Onida, we got the kids settled down and went out to the Blue Goose bar for a little bit. I’m not a big fan of bars, but this one has the best elements – it’s not too loud, there is seating for everyone, there is sports on the TVs throughout the place, they serve free popcorn and there’s no smoking. At 10pm, we were slated to head out for a two hour limo bus ride to celebrate Matt’s 30th birthday. Matt’s family and Becky’s family and a couple friends climbed aboard – it was actually about the right amount of people for the size of the bus. At first, we drove around Onida, but since that only takes about 2 minutes, we decided to do something else. Since Matt’s dad was still out harvesting in the field, he decided we should drive out there to give him a beer. I’m pretty sure this was the first and last time the bus driver has actually driven in a corn field, but that’s what we did. We even had to get out of the way when a grain semi was coming in for another load. Soon a combine pulled up and Matt was able to give his dad a beer. After that we headed up to Agar to the Bunkhouse (the scene of our groom’s dinner) to pick up some food and then headed back to the Blue Goose.
We got up early Saturday morning to make the long haul to my parent’s house. My brothers and grandma were all there and had a great Thanksgiving meal. Mom managed to combine the kids table with the regular table so Dave didn’t have to sit there by his adult self. We got to play some football and some cards and had a great time. We came back again Sunday for more – we went to check out my Grandma’s new senior living apartment in Fergus where my dad and I had moved her the previous weekend.
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