Thanksgiving, for most of my life, has been my favorite holiday. It has been a time for family to get together and enjoy each other's company, great food, and games. It also marks the anniversary (at least in my mind) of the first time that was able to join the grown-ups playing Conquest Of The Empire many years ago. That year, on top of being my first time playing, was one of the few times that I beat my Uncle Sheldon at a boardgame. He was most certainly the one that got me interested in playing strategy board games, such as Cathedral, Othello, Battlestar Galactica (the one from 1984, not the more recent one), and Conquest Of The Empire.
Earlier in the week we were having a rough time. We had discussed having Tim and LaZer over for dinner and games, but weren't even sure if it was going to happen at that point with all the chaos in our family. Thankfully we were able to have a nice, fairly calm day. The food that Beth and I prepared turned out tasting great and was conveniently on-time, despite having some oven issues. Tim and LaZer had arrived a bit later than I had originally hoped, but with all the food that we wanted taking longer than I had expected, they arrived close to the time that the food was ready to eat. We had a nice traditional Thanksgiving, with turkey (oven-roasted turkey breast, not a whole turkey), mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, home-made cranberry sauce, Stove Top stuffing, corn, macaroni casserole (more like mac & cheese than macaroni salad), corn and yams. We also had 4 pies that Beth made - her mom's cherry pie recipe, my mom's apple and Paradise Pumpkin pie recipes, and a standard pumpkin pie.
After dinner, we played a few rounds of The Crew, which is a co-operative trick-taking card game that everyone was new to, other than myself. The game was part of a "megahaul" that I picked up recently thanks to Isaac searching the internet for deals on games. (This set of games was sold as a bundle that we only knew some of what we were getting ahead of time, but even at that point, the breakdown was nearly $4 per game, and some of the games could be valued over $50!) Anyway, it took some time to get everyone to understand how the game worked, but we did manage to complete Missions 1 - 4. Maybe we'll get closer to Planet Nine next time...
