Happy Thanksgiving 2009 - Keji Style

What are you thankful for? Some times the answers sound so lame, but there are no other words that can sum up what a gal like me is thankful for. You know, the standard beauty queen pageant answer "family and friends". But that's it. Family and Friends. No other way to say it. I am thankful for my lovely tent... our big blue tarp.... dry wood and wood stoves. My very nice thermal leggings from Marks Work Warehouse, and my 22 year old duckie shoes, warm and water proof. But all of those things sound so trivial... and meaningless unless you were with me this weekend with family and friends... being thankful for those things.

Keji was beautiful. It started out cold... and wet... and ended cold and sunny. It was a Thanksgiving weekend like no other, in many ways, and I liked it that way. I missed my far away family, and my never to come back family quite a bit this weekend, and that is partly why I enjoyed having Thanksgiving away from my house. The other part of why I enjoying having thanksgiving away was that Turkey dinner was cooked by someone else and we didn't even have to do the dishes!!!

We arrived Friday afternoon, and started setting up our awesome tent. Jill arrived just a few minutes after us, and I helped her put up her tent which is exactly like my tent.. hee hee. Then Donna arrived and we all helped her put up her tent... which is exactly like mine and Jill's. It was totally hilarious.. all three of us ... side by side.. same tent... Michelle and Scott arrived, and they put up there tent on our site, Mel and the kids arrived and Jeff, and kids... tents were raised and Sara was the last to arrive after a long day at work.

Tarps were raised or at least spread out,

and suppers were cooked

the dishes got done and then campfire time. It was a very damp and cool night, and the fire was nice to be around, but most of us were pooped and cold, and when the rains started, we packed it all in, and snuggled into our tents for the night. The rains pounded all night, and the sound of the rain deafened the sound of anything else, and because we were under the trees as well, we had a lot of raindrops from the trees too, which made it seem like the rain was much worse.

Lucy...not enjoying the dirty ground! She moved inside the tent kitchen to snuggle on her blanket.

Saturday morning, bright and early, Jill and Mel scouted out the cook house at Mills Falls, and before long we all moved down there to stay warm and spend the day carving pumpkins, taking walks and playing some games.

We tried an experiment with the seeds that were rescued from the pumpkins and we roasted them in the frying pan on the wood stove to see if they would roast... We followed my old faithful Pumpkin seed recipe (you can find it on my blog from a couple of Halloween's ago) and they turned out very yummy. So yummy, we ate the first batch pretty quickly and roasted a second batch all afternoon... yum.

I apologize for my crappy pictures, but I don't think my flash was working well, or something. I had a ton of fun pics, but the just didn't turn out.

After a great potluck supper with salads, sloppy joes, hash brown casserole, chicken pot pie (with peas!!!!) and yummy cinnamon buns and pie.... we packed up all our pumpkins and supplies for the day and headed back to our sites to get ready for the big pumpkin walk that is tradition on Thanksgiving weekend Saturday night at Keji .

I will have to blog the evenings events in my next blog, because its a story worthy of its own blog... and besides, I hope to get some pictures from Donna of the great pumpkins of the night!