Lorelei IV: "Home" for Thanksgiving

November 24-December 3, 2015

We rented a car and drove back to IL for Thanksgiving. If you have a pet, check out the website, www.bringfido.com, to find pet friendly hotels, restaurants, and other services all around the country. Most hotels do charge an extra fee for pets which varies widely – some charge per night, some per stay – so it is definitely helpful to know what the fee is when making decisions on where to stay while traveling. Fortunately for us, Sasha is well behaved and travels well on long trips.

Asleep upside down in the back seat of the rental car

Rob’s Aunt Nancy and Uncle Denny always host Thanksgiving dinner at their home in the country. Rob & I had not been able to go there for the past couple of years due to work obligations, so it was especially nice to be able to go and enjoy visiting with all of the family!

Dessert table with all the favorite pies

Hardly anyone ever shows the aftermath

Family gathered around the table

Men talking about hunting, boating, and whatever else they talk about

Horse rides for the kids

Chance, Lily, and Broagan riding together

Sasha wasn't sure about the horses

Sasha decides she should supervise

Shoot sees horses all the time, so he'd rather play with his stick

On Saturday, we cooked a turkey ourselves, because Rob likes making noodles and having leftover turkey and noodles for several days – something you miss when you go to someone else’s house for Thanksgiving. Rob is proud of his noodle-making skills which he learned at the knee of his Grandma Cookson, and most people that try them rave about them. When we went to visit my mother in North Carolina last fall, he made noodles for them, because Jack had been talking about them ever since he had had them at our house one Thanksgiving! “When are you going to send me some of those noodles?” he would ask whenever we talked to them on the phone, so we couldn’t disappoint him when we were actually there visiting.

Mary, Ann, Rob, and Jim

Mary Ellen, Tammie, Susie, Phil, and Barb

Butch

For those of you who have never had noodles at Thanksgiving before – like me before I married Rob – they must be a Midwest tradition in some families. Instead of making plain gravy, the turkey drippings are used to boil homemade egg noodles so that you end up with a noodle/gravy dish that is served over mashed potatoes and/or turkey just like regular gravy. They are delicious! Rob says the secret is cutting the noodles thin and allowing enough time for them to “rest” and dry a bit before cooking them.


Rob's famous noodles (I'll do another post on the whole process since Andy wants step-by-step instructions with pictures)

My friend, Christina, who is like the daughter I never had, was able to come over with her husband, Lamar, and new baby, Cayllum. Fortunately, Cayllum was born a couple of weeks before we weighed anchor, so I was able to help the new mama out a little before we left. He was so tiny when he was born, because he was a couple of weeks early, but Mama’s been feeding him good so he’s getting to be a big boy now.

Cayllum Zane Feltman

Christina & Cayllum

Lamar

Rob officially set his retirement date to be December 3, so he went to the fire station to have lunch with his shift on Sunday, November 29. Fire Chief Joe Henning also came to the lunch and presented Rob with his retirement plaque. His shift got together and bought him a survival rifle, which is stainless steel and can be taken apart for compact easy storage. If I can get the pictures that were taken, I’ll add them to this post.

While he was doing that, I had lunch with my nieces, Jaki and Kelsey, and my great niece, Ella, at Zoup’s, which is a specialty soup restaurant. There are only 2 soups that you can count on to be on the menu while the rest of them vary, so the first counter you come to is the sample counter. You can sample any or all of the soups before you decide on one. I tried the crab and corn chowder and the Singapore squash soups. They were both good, but the squash soup was fantastic, with a peppery, sweet curry flavor I just couldn’t resist!

(From left) Kelsey, Ella, Tyler, Jaki, Ivan

My sister, Laurie, had to work Thanksgiving eve, Thanksgiving, and then the weekend, so I didn’t get a chance to see her until Monday. Rob was out with some guys from his shift, so I went to Laurie’s house to visit. My niece, Shayna, was back from visiting her in-laws and made a very tasty broccoli/cauliflower soup. My niece, Mia, was home and was trying on outfits for school. Laurie, Shayna, and I played 3 games of Yahtzee with my mother via Skype, while we talked and caught up with each other. You have to understand that a game of Yahtzee for us is the completion of a full sheet of 6 individual regular games by playing the whole sheet until all the spaces are filled – or zeroed – to see how we could spend an evening playing “just 3 games”.

It turned cold and rainy for the last few days of our stay, so we weren’t too disappointed when it was time to start the drive back to Florida. Other people who have moved away from “home” – and particularly full time cruisers -- will understand when I say that our boat feels more like Home now, even after just a couple of months. I think it’s because we aren’t wishy-washy about it in our minds and have committed to really giving this lifestyle a chance.