Awesomegiving

A weekend of Friends, Food, Fun and of course, Fatness (actually, ‘Gluttony,’ but that doesn’t start with an ‘F’). This past Thanksgiving (henceforth to be referred to as ‘Awesomegiving’) was a huge success.

Getting There
Regardless of what others may say, Erin and I weren’t really in charge of Awesomegiving this year. It wasn’t at our house, but since we have the mighty force of the Internet at our disposal, we took it upon ourselves to relay important information to the rest of the volunteers who were attending. Our original plan after Thanksgibbons last year (we miss you Kevin Gibbons by the way!) was to have this year’s Awesomegiving at our house. Better stated, our previous house. That house had a private beach for roasting any number of our gobbling friends, lots of room for turkey-stuffed volunteers to sprawl out in, and perhaps most important of all, an oven—intricate in the development of our favorite addition to any holiday festivities, pies. Sadly, since we’ve moved, those amenities are not available to us anymore. If we had celebrated Awesomegiving at our new house we would have had to fight with hundreds of fishing boats for roasting space on the beach, many volunteers would have had no covered space in which to sprawl and our tiny toaster oven most likely would have left us with a black hulk of damaged dough instead of pies. We couldn’t imagine 25 volunteers with a pie-crazed look in their eyes. It’s too scary to imagine. Fortunately, our good friend Ian knew about a place that could take care of all our wildest dreams and more. We rented a house (nay, a Mansion…yes, with a capital ‘M’) that gave us a private beach, an oven, many rooms (which happened to have AIR CONDITIONING and HOT WATER) as well as a Videoke machine. It was perfect. We leapt at the chance to celebrate Awesomegiving in our rented Mansion.

One of the biggest challenges of Awesomegiving was that no one could find turkeys. Last year it wasn’t much of a problem, but this year, we figured they must have gone into hiding. Word must have leaked out in the Turkey community that Americans were in the area looking for proper Awesomegiving essentials. We had spread the word to all of our friends, co-workers and even random people on the street that we were on the look-out for the elusive Awesomegivingus Hugeus Birdus. Our landlord’s brother (who is also our neighbor) was getting a new alternator for his van the week before Awesomegiving when he saw some baby turkeys running around the shop. I’m not sure why baby turkeys were running around an auto shop. They weren’t even old enough to drive. Anyways, he knew we were Turkey hunting and asked if there were any bigger Turkeys lurking anywhere. There were. He saw. He liked. He called. We went. We saw. We liked. We bought. We were very happy. Two 8+ kilogram birds hiding out on a Turkey farm. Who would’ve known to look there?!

We picked the birds up on our way to the Mansion, intending to place them in boxes and bring them with us on a bus (the fact that sentence sounds normal should indicate how much we have changed since arriving here). The first bird went in without any questions or worries. I think he was excited to see the Mansion. Apparently the second bird had received some form of information about what was to happen to him and his friend at the Mansion, and he was determined to make a break for it. Fortunately he broke the cardboard bonds that were holding him before we left the farm. (I say ‘fortunately’ because the only thing worse than the thought of my trying to catch a loose turkey and putting him back in a box is…wait…I can’t think of anything that could possibly be worse. That is my nightmare. My fear of fowl runs deep—a well tossed stone a number of years back on the shores of Lake Michigan at a gull’s head that resulted in his death has made me wary of all birds and their impending retribution. But I digress.) The turkey worked his way out, but after catching the loose turkey (the Farmer, not the Farver) and putting him back in the box, an overly generous amount of duct tape and string was applied as our protection against any further escape attempts. Our journey on the bus was as uneventful as riding a bus with live birds in boxes should be. We transferred the birds to a tricycle (I wish our camera wasn’t kaput so you could see this sequence of events...) and a few minutes later we arrived at the Mansion with 2 boxed birds and 3 boxes crammed with miscellaneous Awesomegiving paraphernalia, pots and possible prizes (pending playing of plenty of party games).

Lord of the Ring and Bratwurst, too
The night before Awesomegiving we celebrated the wonderful holiday of Lots-Of-Americans-Who-Get-Together-And-Grill-And-Eat-Real-Bratwursts Day. It’s a wonderful (as well as self-describing) holiday. Erin prepared and baked yummy fruit pies and everyone talked about how awesome Awesomegiving was going to be. That evening, we celebrated Lots-Of-Americans-Who-Get-Together-And-Grill-And-Eat-Real-Bratwursts Day by doing just that. It was wonderful. Real brats. Real mustard. I wish this holiday was celebrated more often here.

Awesomegiving Day itself was a flurry of activity. Some of the less-girly men of our group woke up early, killed and prepared the Turkeys on the beach before the sun even knew what was going on. Others (mainly the women and I) stayed in the kitchen and prepared the other necessary items for a successful Awesomegiving. Our list of items includes Baked Macaroni, Green Bean Casserole, Squash Soup, Mixed Veggies, Cranberries, Stuffing, Garlic Mashed Potatoes, Gravy, 3 Pumpkin Pies, 2 Apple Pies, 1 Cherry and 1 Blueberry Pie, Biscuits, freshly baked breads, Brownies and 4 Slow-Roasted-on-the-Beach-Turkeys. The cooking was amazingly laid back as we timed everything with German precision. Our experience of last year’s Thanksgibbons (where we had 1 knife and a kitchen built for 2) prepared us to be, well, better prepared. The atmosphere was so relaxed that I even had a chance to go play some football in the ocean.

Some of Ian’s friends from college were visiting (they had provided the beverages for Lots-Of-Americans-Who-Get-Together-And-Grill-And-Eat-Real-Bratwursts Day) and someone else had brought a real, honest-to-goodness American Football. I haven’t thrown a real, honest-to-goodness American Football for a while, so I excitedly scampered into the water to toss around the pigskin. Since I hadn’t killed any Turkeys that day, I needed to do something to raise my testosterone level to appropriate levels. We tossed, we joked, it was great. Just like Thanksgiving at home, except in an ocean. Everything was going well. That seems to be when something goes wrong. At least for me. After one particular botched catch attempt I looked down at my hands and saw, well, nothing. Not just no football, but nothing. For single men, this shouldn’t be a problem. However, I am married, and this was cause for considerable concern. My wedding band had decided it didn’t want to play football any more. I wish it would have told me. I would have gladly gone back inside. Instead, it must have jumped off of my finger while I was chest deep in the water. I immediately froze and tried to scan the bottom. It was pretty clear. I could see the thousands of rocks that littered the ground with little effort. Thousands of perfect places for a perturbed ring to go and hide in. Ian, in his infinite wisdom, had brought his mask and snorkel, so he donned it and proceeded to slowly circle the area that we had been playing in. We joked about how cool it would be when we found it—it would be just like Lord of the Rings. He looked, I looked, other people took turns swimming around the area, but the Ring did not want to be found again. His freedom was apparently more important than my commitment to my wife, because after an hour of intense searching, he did not show up again. It was like Lord of the Rings except we didn’t find the Ring. For what it’s worth, Erin thought it was kind of funny that I was the one who lost his ring, since I have been worried for over 20 months that she would lose her wedding band. No worries, we’re still married; I just don’t have the ring to prove it anymore.

Dinner was spectacular to say the least. We ate at around 4 in the afternoon after I forced everyone to gather in a circle and tell what they were thankful for. Actually, most people were very eager to share what they were thankful for. Many of us were thankful for the tight bond that exists among the group of us assigned to this particular region of the country. I really appreciate the people that I’ve met here. They have been the ones I’ve worked with, played with, griped with and celebrated with since we arrived in country some 20 months ago. Although we celebrated a wonderful Awesomegiving together, it will be nice to celebrate next year with our family at home.


A picture of Erin and our Awesomegiving spread