Friday, November 23, 2012

Just Another Day Living Overseas

Disclaimer: its Dave here again. Shannon and the kids are in the USA where she has limited access to the Internet right now.

It's just another day living overseas. Holidays come and go and some are celebrated and some not so much. Traditions are big in our home as it helps to create memories. Like Friday night movies and desert Wednesdays. One of the best memories I have of Thanksgiving is at my Mamaw's and Papaw's house where a bunch of tables would be placed to span from one end of the living room to the other side of the dining room. Around the table were their two kids and most of the grandchildren. But that was a long time ago. Papaw passed in 1979.

I use memories such as this to set a standard for what celebrations like thanksgiving should be like. My last Thanksgiving with my Mother was similar except Shannon and I hosted it in our home. Again in a small house with tables spanning the living room and dining room filled with most of her children and grandchildren. My mother passed in 2000.

This Thanksgiving Shannon and the kids went to her uncle Tommy's house with her mother, enjoying fried turkey and friendly games of washers... creating new memories for our kids to build upon and help set the standard for them later on.

Not only do we have holiday meals at the dinner table, but we eat every meal as a family at the dinner table. Ok except one... the inauguration of President Obama... we all sat in the living room to see it live. History in the making.

You see, this is the first Thanksgiving in seven years in the USA let alone at her Uncles. I don't think the kids even remember the last Thanksgiving they had in the USA. I am truly thankful that they are spending it with Shannon's Mom and Uncle.

Living overseas... its hard for me to go "home" because I know that my traditions are so different then most of my family... All of their celebrations are done buffet style. You get your food and you go find some place to sit and eat.

I am not sure where I am going with this except perhaps to just write it down to share my thoughts.

It would be nice to know that we are not the only people out here that hold on to old traditions. If you have any traditions you have feel free to share.

3 comments:

KJ said...

What I loved about Thanksgiving was eating food all day. I always thought the cold turkey with the cold mashed potatoes was the best. It's been hard to establish my own traditions having to travel, but this year I stayed home. It was nice. I turned off my phone, TV & computer. We cooked, played games, drew, and just spent the time together. If we needed a recipe, we looked in a book or we tried to figure it out on our own. It was nice. Love y'all. Miss all of you, my friends!

Terio said...

I, too, have great memories of Thanksgiving at mamaws. Spending the night waking up to the smell of the turkey in the roster. Mamaw busy as a bee. I remember setting name tags at the last thanksgiving with mamaw. Putting MY name next to Brian's. hahaha. Funny!! We had a nice sit down thanksgiving this year. First time I cooked it in 4 years. Jorden, jennifer and Ryan hung out all afternoon doing nothing. Traditions are nice.

Connie said...

I am somewhat the opposite. The HUGE Thanksgiving get-togethers were always such a big boring ordeal, not very enjoyable, at all, when I was a kid. Probably because my sister and I would usually be the only kids there! I don't mind them now, but our tradition, of 'just us' is something I actually treasure very much. I'll share the Christmas feasting, but I like to keep Thanksgiving to ourselves.