Thanksgiving Tradition Past

This is me and my girls in the early 90’s standing in front of my monster doe at our lease in the Texas Hill Country.  I’m thinking it’s probably 18 years ago or so,  give or take a year.  Aren’t the girls cute all bundled up in their coats and hats?  How about that “Texas Big Hair” and that perm?

Back then, in my “past life”,   we would leave Thanksgiving night or the next morning and head to the deer camp.  I remember regretting killing this beauty as soon as I saw her up close with her big beautiful eyes still open staring at me.  I have never hunted deer since.  Killing a deer is just one of those things that I thought I wanted to do at the time because that is what everyone else was doing.  Each family on the lease would have a limit of deer that they could kill every year so I wasn’t allowed to kill a buck because the men wanted those for their selves.     I really enjoyed going to the lease and cooking on the campfire, being with nature and telling campfire stories.  The girls  loved it too and Mini Me still goes with her dad on occasion. 

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday and normally I would spend 2 days cooking  for all of my family and they would eat and leave me with the mess.  That’s our tradition.  This year I only have to make a couple dishes because we are spending the day with Hillbilly’s family.  We will visit with them and come home and won’t be leaving to go hunting afterwards.  Hillbilly and I only hunt birds and go fishing ,although we would like to be on a lease but only to shoot deer with a camera. 

What are your Thanksgiving traditions?