Pilgrims and Indians

How many of you can say you had a real Indian at your Thanksgiving dinner table this year? We can! Also among our distinguished guests this year were six direct descendants of William Bradford (the governor of the Plymouth Colony widely credited with planning the first Thanksgiving feast in 1621). So we're thinking we had about as authentic a Thanksgiving dinner as you can get.

Okay, so Rajesh isn't a Native American (but you can't dispute that he's an Indian) and our distinguished descendants of William Bradford happen to be my wife and kids, but hey, that's still pretty cool we think. We had a really great day.

In case you're interested, here's the line from Tammy to Mr. Bradford (you other Ebberts can use this as your claim to fame too!)...Baby Finches children of Tammy Ebbert daughter of Darleen Hall d. of Wallace Hall son of Horatio Hall s. of Ann Tracy d. of Gamaliel Tracy s. of Gamaliel Tracy s. of Gamaliel Tracy s. of Nehemiah Tracy s. of Rachel Ripley d. of Hanna Bradford d. of William Bradford s. of William Bradford (Mr. Thanksgiving).

I mentioned Rajesh in our Halloween post (he helped us carve pumpkins, remember?). He's flying back to India tomorrow, but we were happy that he could still be here to spend Thanksgiving with us. He helped to "spice up" the day (I'll get to the spices in a few minutes).

We started the morning with our annual church "Turkey Bowl". Every year on Thanksgiving morning, a bunch of guys from church get together to play football for a couple of hours. This year, we had a good crowd of 22 people (4 boys including Adam, several teenagers including a couple from the high school football team, and a bunch of old"er" men trying to relive the glory days [me - except without the glory part]). Rajesh came with us for his first ever experience at American football.

So all day yesterday people at work were telling me to take it easy on Rajesh, make sure Rajesh didn't get hurt, be sure to watch out for him and so on. Nobody warned me that cricket players know how to run really fast and hit hard! Perhaps when they said "watch out for him" they were really saying "WATCH OUT!".

Rajesh was impressive on the football field. For someone who's never really seen American football, let alone played it, he sure had a pretty good understanding of how it works. So we ran this one play, my team was on offense and Rajesh's on defense. I was sent on a long fly and there was a trick handoff to try to draw the defense off me. The first part worked and I was wide (I mean wide) open down field with nothing between me and the end zone. The ball was thrown downfield, a perfect pass. That's when I noticed Rajesh coming - and he was coming FAST. I think he scared me and I got ahead of myself and tried to turn and run before I caught the ball right, and I totally dropped it. At that point he hit me and hit me hard and as I was going down I think his knee got me on the top of the head and I was flat on my back. I didn't notice the blood until later. I laid there for a few minutes trying to get the buzz out of my brain, then hopped up and congratulated him for the great hit. He was awesome. He also intercepted a pass right in front of me (again - that I should have caught, but he was too fast for me) and ran it back for a touchdown. I took several other good hits from him. It was a great time!

Adam also had fun. He didn't get the ball as much as he would have liked, but made some great plays and had one run that gained about 12 yards. He's going to be a good football player someday I think.

At one o'clock we had our feast. In addition to Rajesh, we also invited some friends from church, the Dixon's, to join us. Pretty traditional meal - turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, veggies, casseroles, bread, sweet potatoes, and so on. Rajesh even brought an Indian curry along to share with us. He called it "medium" spice. Translating "medium" from Hindi to English is "Extra super spicy hot". It sure added some great flavor to an otherwise typical bland holiday meal. Rajesh was also kind enough to help us in the kitchen while we were scrambling to finish up preparations. At one point, I think he was stirring two batches of gravy at the stove. Some hosts we are, but we appreciated the help!

Here are some pictures...


Ben and I made all the pies. Well, Ben stirred the flour while I made the pies.


This year we only made five. I think last year we ended up with 10 or so and found we couldn't quite eat them all. I like to make pies (and sort of like to eat them too!).


Here's everyone lined up ready to feast. Look at all the yummy food (we still have some if you're in the neighborhood)!


Since we're sharing American traditions with Rajesh, it was only right to let him break the wishbone (plus it saved a war between the kids about who would get it). And, just like football earlier in the day - he whipped me! I'm glad he'll get his wish (maybe that means a wedding in the near future? Was that what your wish was, Rajesh?? :-)).

It was a great day all-around. After Rajesh returned to his hotel, we went to the park across the street to hunt for a geocache. Our friend Rich (Dixon) is a world class geocacher. We do it occasionally and enjoy it, but nothing like Rich does it.

After the geocache we were frozen (it snowed this morning... I'm dreaming of a white Thanksgiving.... just like the....sorry I'm not a very good singer!) so the rest of the day was spent relaxing and eating pie.

Hope you all had a really great Thanksgiving. We have much to be thankful for and need to remember those things more often! We took time during dinner to talk about the things we were thankful for. For my work friends that are reading this, you will appreciate that Rajesh's response was "I'm thankful for the great people I work with and the good team that we have! They make my life a lot easier." (I didn't say it quite as eloquently as he did.) I absolutely agree with him! (And I like all you family people too.)