It is our annual Thanksgiving weekend. It's historic....it's epic...it's memorable.
For many years I was in retail, which meant...I hated Christmas. I did not get time off during Christmas, so Thanksgiving became my favorite holiday because it was fun and I was pretty much guaranteed it off.
It started in 1991 up at Chataway Lakes.
There was our family plus 3 others. We stayed in these tiny cabins with no bathrooms. They had one open room with a bunk bed, a double bed, a picnic table, a wood stove oven and a sink...but no running water...we had to go fetch water. Thank goodness it was a beautiful sunny weekend so we could have our picnic tables all set up in a row outside for our big Thanksgiving meal. I have no idea how our mother's did it...but they did. We had fun. I even sprained my ankle that weekend.
Our mom's decided that was a little too rustic for us.
The next year (1992) they decided on Roche Lake.
This year it was our family plus 2 others. We stayed in these fancy schmancy cabins with tv's and everything. We had real beds. We had washrooms. We had running water. There was even more than one floor. Downstairs had a bedroom and the loft had a couple of beds. It was quite different than our previous year.
I guess it was a little too fancy because our parents went on a search for something new.
Enter Mile High Resort.
From 1993 - 1995 we stayed in these small cabins. Sometimes there were 4 families, sometimes there were 3. The "kids" started bringing friends/boyfriends/girlfriends...etc. We switched up how we stayed in the cabins. Sometimes all the female "kids" stayed in one, while the guys got divided amongst the parents...I guess us girls were trusted to be alone more.
Then in 1996 the resort built these larger cabins. We've been staying in them ever since. Sometimes when we have more people we rent one of the smaller cabins, but most of the time we try to squeeze everyone in.
Up until and including 2005 the same 2 or 3 families joined us. They decided that was their last year to do this. For 2006 and 2007 it was just my family...and one of my best friends, but she's a sister...she's family.
Then in 2008 my mom's sister's family started joining us and have been coming since.
We quad, we 4x4, there have been dirtbikes in the past, they fish, some have been horseback riding, we walk, we hike, we relax, we eat, we nap, we have campfires, we play games and we laugh.
It's a perfect weekend. It's gone from us as kids just going along for fun and the mom's doing all the cooking. Now each of us adult children are in charge of planning, shopping and preparing one meal for everyone and the mom's do the main turkey meal. I love looking back at how it's changed over the years....the people that have joined us at different times and how the dynamics have changed.
It's something we looked forward to as kids and now my sister's kids look forward too.
Do you have any long traditions in your family? What do you do for Thanksgiving?
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