Thanksgiving 2011

A trip that is "over the river and through the woods" to Reno means that we drive over "America's Loneliest Highway" (being Nevada's Highway 50), and about 145 miles out of Reno is something known as "The Shoe Tree." The following pictures illustrate.
A large cottonwood grows in a gully. People stop, tie their shoe laces together, and fling them with all their might--to strand them in the shoe tree for all to enjoy. Katie has some story about how it came to be, but it's there. Well, at least it WAS--until some vandal cut it down last year! Unbelievable. But there it was, in the gully, shoes scattered about. So what you see in the photo above is really the replacement shoe tree that quickly was covered in shoes. The original tree in the winter (which is about the only time we've really seen it up close when the leaves are gone) is positively BLACK with shoes hanging all over it. I remember approaching the shoe tree once years ago and thinking that it was full of blackbirds. But it was just shoes. It was quite a landmark.

Below is a closeup of a post nearby the original shoe tree (Original Shoe Tree is laying in the ditch just beyond. Caution--it is a graphic photo. ha). This quote says, "Shoe Tree Lives On in our SOLES." Punny, huh? There are other tributes to the well-loved tree etched into the post. Quite touching.

And then it was Thanksgiving in Reno with Katie and Casey and their cute little boys. Mike and I took his Mom and Eric with us; Nick drove from Salt Lake and took his Aunt Gayela and girlfriend Kaylee with him. So it made for a nice bunch of folks and we had a nice time. We were there from Wednesday through Saturday/Sunday.

On Thanksgiving Day, we ate and watched football and played games. (Mike and Casey tried to do some repairs on our car's squeaky/grinding brakes. ) And ate some more. Whew! Turkey and all the trimmings and everyone chipped in with food and help, so it was nice.

On Friday, we were going to take a bunch of people to Virginia City, but the brakes on our car started smoking, so Mike stayed with the car, had it towed, and I ended up taking just Berenice and Gayela and Hayden and we went to Virginia City. Gayela had never been. Berenice and I had an assignment from Mike to get something at one of the shops there. We spend a couple of hours looking around. Below is a photo of me and Hayden. Apparently there really ARE Camel races in Virginia City! I never knew. But I saw the race track on a map. And they have train rides and stage coach rides--but not in the winter. Berenice did treat us to a 20 minute narrated trolley ride, so that was fun!We even found Santa there! He was in the visitor's center, so we had to stop and have a picture taken.


Below. Hayden is still very much into trains. Apparently, so is Nick! ha. Nick is choo-choo-ing the train all around Hayden. They were taking turns. I missed the photo op of Nick lying on the floor in between the tracks.


And Corbin is still very cuddly. Here he is enjoying his bottle while enjoying Eric's company. They're laying on a thick memory foam pad that came off the hide-a-bed in family room. It was really comfy to lounge around on and play on during the day, so we didn't always haul it out of the way when the bed was made up.

SMILE, Gayela. :-)

Below. Just chillin'. Katie with Corbin, Mike, Nick, Kaylee. Nick looks scruffy because he has his November MOstache.
Below. Just a casual shot of us eating breakfast together on Thursday morning. Except for Katie's family. They were all still asleep. We made ourselves very much at home. We are quite a formidable mob when you get us all together.
And, I never took a picture of our wonderful Thanksgiving feast! But it WAS grand, and it was plentiful. Unfortunately for Casey and Katie, though, all the leftovers were gone by the time we all left on Saturday afternoon (Nick's carload going to SLC) and Sunday morning (our carload to Cedar). We never fixed any other meals--just ate leftover turkey and rolls and potatoes and stuffing and gravy and salad....mmmmm.

That Corbin is such a sweet cuddle-bug!

Below. Oh, and I straightened out Katie's Tupperware cabinetS while I was there. Yes, she has TWO Tupperware cupboards and they were both all over the place. They were still sort of organized when we left. But then, Corbin doesn't know how to open the cabinets. Yet. Kaylee got Katie's sewing machine running while we were there, too. AND Mike (with help) installed a pull-up bar on the ceiling of their garage. He tried to fix the garbage disposal, but it was too far gone for any "fixing".

We were very grateful for good weather coming and going, that the car's brakes didn't burn up on the way home, grateful that the audio books entertained us and kept us awake. We are grateful to have spent good quality time with our family! Thanks again, Katie and Casey!!