Picture it, Thanksgiving 2002

I was looking at some pictures of a group of friends.
You know the ones, everyone has a beer in their hand and
tongues are sticking out. Yeah, we’ve all been in a picture
or two like that.

Since Craig and I met, none of us were really into the party
scene or the bar scene. Been there, done that, KWIM?
But occassionally we would get together with friends and either
one or both of us would kick back a few and then a few too many.

So here we were living our first year as Husband and Wife, some
2000 km away from where we started. Kitchener/Waterloo. We had
spent the summer playing slo-pitch and met a great group of friends
that we spent lots of time with.

Kitchener has about one of the biggest Octoberfest celebrations in all the world.
Seriously! People party their arses off for like two weeks. Our first year there
together we decided to get together with our friends (three couples including us) for a PAAAARRRRTTTTAAAAYYY! The weekend just so happened to fall at the same time as Thanksgiving – the first Thanksgiving that Craig and I had not bought a bird to bake. It was going to be lonely for us.

So as we are kicking back a few with our new found friends, we decide that this is not the year to forget about cooking a bird! No way! The Miller’s would have Turkey day! So at about 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning Craig and I and two of our friends (Craig and Jen) walk… err, I should really say stumble into a 24 hour Sobeys and buy a fresh bird. It would be cooked the following day for the four of us to enjoy. I can just imagine what kind of a sight we must have been in that damn grocery store with our big ideas.

Anyway, anyone who knows me knows not to count on seeing too much of me the day after drinking. It is sad. Can you say, Hang Over? Well I hang waaayyy over til sometime the next night. What was I thinking when I agreed it was a good idea for the Miller’s to cook a bird in less than 12 hours.

Needless to say, our friends Craig and Jen came to the rescue. They came over around 1:00 or 2:00 in the afternoon (or so I am told – I was upstairs puking me guts out). Our friend Jen did all the work, cooked the bird and we all sat down to eat at 11:00 p.m. that night.

We are the only people that we know who invite friends over for a big Turkey dinner and then expect them to do all the work. (I just had to share this fond memory with my readers).