Thanksgiving 2007

Thanksgiving usually means four things here in the US – travel, family, food and shopping (not necessarily in that order!). I have most of my family back in India, most places are too cold to travel to by November, I am a vegetarian and I prefer sleeping in to shopping. So Thanksgiving has always been little more than a 4-day weekend for me. But this one was different and we managed to get into the spirit of this holiday by having a vacation that included all those four things.

Travel
Having decided to drive to Phoenix for a family reunion, we decided that 11 hours in the car would be too tough on the kids (and not to mention, our marriage!). So we thought of taking a break in LA, which was conveniently about the midpoint of our trip. But when you have 2 kids, staying in LA without visiting Disneyland is akin to murder. So we eventually left Tuesday, a day earlier than planned and visited Disneyland on Wednesday.

'The Happiest Place on Earth' has never let us down. Kavya was ofcourse the most enthusiastic in the group this time and enjoyed every single ride she went on. Since this was a trip targeted towards the kids, we focused on rides that the kids could go on. So we spent most of the time in Fantasyland before heading over to Tomorrowland for the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage, the only new attraction that none of us in the group had seen. The Jungle Cruise and The Haunted Mansion rounded off the day and for the first time, we headed back to the hotel without waiting for Phantasmic or the fireworks.

Family
We continued on to Phoenix Thursday morning for the get-together with my brother and three other cousins. Pretty close back when we were growing up and rarely having a chance to meet after coming to the US, it was a fun reunion for all of us. As in most reunions, a lot of time was spent just chatting and reminiscing about the good ol' days. Kavya and Karthik had fun too since they had their own cousins in the same age-group.

All of us also had a small outing to Lake Saguaro, about an hour away. It was a pretty large lake and we rented motor boats (called pontoons) which we had to drive ourselves. We all (including Kavya) took turns sailing the boat and it was real fun.

Food
When a group of us Tamils get together, food is never really a problem, is it?! There was no turkey on the menu ofcourse but food was never in short supply (and food tastes so much better when you realize you don't have to load the dishwasher afterwards!). Home-made snacks like pakodas and doodh bedas made me give a lot of thanks to the hosts!

Shopping
Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is the busiest shopping day of the year and the start of shopping for the holiday season. My shopping during previous Black Fridays has been restricted to sauntering into stores quite late in the day to pick up some trifles. With some enthusiastic shoppers to give me company, I got into the mood for some real shopping this time and was at Target at about 5am. There were 50 people in line before me and by 6am, when it opened, the line had grown to probably 300. The area resembled a crime scene with the line cordoned off with yellow tape and policemen patrolling the area! But I managed to pick up all the items I was looking for – a 10” portable DVD player (for $84), a 500G USB external hard drive (for $87) and seasons 7 and 8 of Seinfeld (for $15 each). It was a fun experience with both the shoppers and the store employees being surprisingly polite and helpful.

Overall, it was another memorable vacation...