Thanksgiving

Our first Thanksgiving away from our family was a success!!! Turns out we don't really need you guys around after all! (I'm kidding! And my unexpected tears upon a Thanksgiving Skype call to my family will certainly attest to that.) But really, since we couldn't be surrounded by throbs of family we had the next best thing... throbs of friends and Uncle Tim!

We were supposed to have about 13 or 14 people over to our house for dinner and we were going to spread out over our dining room table and a card table. But a few of the guys ended up having to work and couldn't make it. Kristen's husband, Giff, has been in Australia for a few weeks and isn't getting back till a week into December, so he was MIA for the holiday. Uncle Tim had to work up in Nago on Thanksgiving and joined us later that night. Also, another friend, Mike, has been in Alaska for a while and isn't back yet. Yet another friend, John, got alerted to do an Aeromedical Evacuation and had to leave on Thanksgiving Day to fly some patients to California and Hawaii. He left his girlfriend, Lindsey, to finish the ham. Because we were missing a few people we decided to try to fit all 10 of us around our dining room table and it worked just fine!

Here from right to left: Katie and Marc Austin, Kristen, Kate and Leif Gilbertson.

Here's Erik carving the smoked turkey! YUM!!!

At the table waiting for Erik to finish with the turkey so we could all go around and say what we are thankful for this year.

Lndsey, Ari and Sara

Kristen next to a few of the dishes, including my sweet potato casserole. Yes, I know it's purple! The sweet potatoes they have here are that color inside. It looks scary but it tastes just the same. I had to have it!

This isn't everything we had. There was a second table full of food too!

After dinner at our house, we all carried our big tummies down the street to Kristen's house for dessert. The night before, Kristen and I had decorated all these sugar cookies that she baked. We started getting really creative towards the end (directly related to how tired we got). Notice the turkey disguised as a cow, the leaf that says pine needle, the leaf turned bat, and many more!

I had to represent the Goff Family way over here in Japan by making a turkey cake! Meet Tom the Turkey.

Here's Uncle Tim eating the plate full of food from dinner that I had prepared for him.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving in Japan, but don't think for a second that our thoughts weren't on you all: our family and friends in the US. We each did whatever it was that made it feel like Thanksgiving here; whether it was a certain dish or tradition or decorations. I've noticed that you have to try a lot harder to get into the holiday spirit here. Obviously Japan doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, but it was even hard to tell on base that something special was coming up. We prepared as well as we could and had lots of fun and ate way too much!

Marines that I work with were telling me that they had briefs all day on Wednesday addressing safety during the holidays. The briefs were basically reminding them not to do anything stupid or not to commit suicide. Telling them to call a friend if they start feeling lonely and depressed and to stay away from alcohol, and so on. I can imagine that it is difficult for them in the barracks on the holidays.

I hope you all had a nice, relaxing holiday and that you enjoyed reading about ours. We'll be updating this thing more often so stay tuned for more exciting- ness! hahahha! Keep in touch :)

Love, Aud