Thanksgiving in Yuma

Have you ever been in the car for 13 hours with a 3 year old? If you haven’t had the pleasure, let me just tell you now that you’re not missing much. While the drive down to Yuma took us roughly 9.5 hours, the drive back seemed to take an eternity as we hit the return holiday traffic, as well as heavy fog, road construction, and just bad luck. All things considered, Landon did a great job though…he’s prone to getting car sick and managed to make it through without puking in my car once this time (although there were a few close calls where we had him stick his head in a bag)…sure, the last two hours it seemed like we had Bart Simpson in the car (“are we there yet?”…”No!”….”are we there yet?”….”No!”)…but that’s to be expected as even Michaela and I were getting antsy and ready to stretch our legs by the time we got home.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, let me start with the trip. We got to Yuma on Monday night/Tuesday morning after working a full day on Monday. The first thing I did when I woke up on Tuesday was head over to Stan’s market, my favorite place in the world to get a good breakfast burrito…and it did not disappoint! For those of you that have never been to Yuma, let me tell you, the Mexican food there is first class…mostly due to the fresh homemade tortillas that seem to be everywhere. Anyhow, after I got my food fix, we spent the majority of the day catching up with Michaela’s family and friends. The last time we made the trip was back in June so we had a lot to catch up on.

Over the next few days it was more of the same, seeing people, grabbing good food, and definitely imbibing some brew. For Thanksgiving, we headed over to Michaela’s Aunt Laura and Uncle Tim’s house to chow down with 40 friends and family members! I sort of stuck myself close to a TV so I could watch my Cowboys pull out a close victory, but Landon had a blast playing with his cousins and Michaela was gabbing away with everybody. After an excellent feast (where I think I had 4 helpings of turkey and mashed potatoes), we went to her Aunt Susan and Uncle Chris’ house to wind down the evening. Landon loved playing with all the toys that Susan kept their for her grandkids.

Friday and Saturday brought the beginning of the tamale-making process, for which I was totally stoked. I spent the majority of both days working with Michaela’s family to learn the ins and outs of how they make 30-40 dozen tamales each year. I took copious notes throughout the whole process and look forward to trying to make them myself sometime in the near future (albeit nowhere near that sort of volume).

On Friday night Michaela and I went out with her cousins to a few bars and had a few too many spirits while enjoying the company…it was just another reminder that “I’m too old for this shit”…it was a ton of fun, but the headache I had the following morning was fairly rough…

We made it home Sunday evening after the epic drive and I was so glad that I elected to take Monday off to recover. I dropped Landon off at school and have never seen a kid more excited to be at school with his buddies. It was great to see him so happy! I proceeded to spend the rest of Monday waging war on the yard, where both of our huge trees shed all of their leaves the same weekend. I also cleaned out the gutters, put up the Christmas lights, put up our Christmas tree, got in a great run, and managed to cook a chili in the crockpot…not too shabby for a day off, eh?

This week will be all about Michaela’s marathon, as she’s running the California International Marathon (CIM) on Sunday morning. Her job with Fleet Feet will be extremely busy in the days leading up to the race, so Landon and I plan to have some fun and kick it while she’s getting her stuff done.

I wanted to make sure to give a big "Thank You!" shout out to Steve and Rachael for having us down for the week and for helping us out with Landon so much, we all had a great time and it was much appreciated.

Hope you all had a terrific holiday, and we’ll see you soon…