Thanksgiving 2019

While not technically part of Thanksgiving, Wingard Women's Weekend is held right before Thanksgiving each year and kicks off the holiday for me. This year we met in St. Louis. Kelly found us a large house to rent and we filled a weekend with shopping, eating, drinking, laughing, and games. My favorite part of this year's WWW was toasting Faye who just made it through a pretty difficult year healthwise. 

Another part of Thanksgiving in our world is Turkey Day and all of the festivities surrounding it. Turkey Day is an annual football game between our high school and Kirkwood High, our friendly rivals. The tradition began over one hundred years ago and is now not only a game on Thanksgiving, but a Chilifest, pep rally, and bonfire the night before. Hours and hours of preparation go into these events for the cheerleaders, which is mostly fun but sometimes pretty physically demanding. The routine they pull off year after year for the pep rally (held once during the day for all of the students and once on Wednesday night for the community) is just impressive. 

Gracie hosted a Friendsgiving at our house on the Tuesday night before Thanksgiving. Kate enjoyed helping with the preparations in any way that she could. 

Some of us left for Decatur early on Thanksgiving day, but some of us stayed behind to attend the football game. Personally, I don't like football enough (or at all) to skip Thanksgiving with my big family to sit in the freezing cold at a crowded game. Luckily Ben wanted to attend the game that Gracie was obviously required to attend, so it worked out. I'm already bracing myself for next year; since it is a home game year and Gracie's senior year, I will be staying in Webster for Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving weekend in Decatur always looks the same and is always a good time. We have Wingard Thanksgiving on Thursday, Thanksgiving with Ben's side on Friday, a night out with our friends on Friday night, and then we do something Decatur-ish on Saturday before heading home.