A bit of a change

This was my Thanksgiving, 2010:

1. Woke up (late!) in a rented condo.
2. Had a leisurely breakfast cooked in the condo kitchenette.
3. Had some more leisure time, audially decorated by three v. excited children.
4. Donned eighteen layers of snow and cold protection, in as leisurely a fashion as such an activity allows.
5. Went skiing en famille. Despite the inevitable bouts of screaming, the disappointment at low-bar goals unmet (I always begin a day of skiing hoping to ride the lift at least five times, and am always laughed off the mountain by fate), the cold, the inopportune demands for food, drink, or bathroom breaks, the day was lovely and made lovelier by the thought of a steaming warm dinner to come.
6. Went back to the condo and helped my SIL prepare Thanksgiving-in-a-box (turkey, gravy, rolls, three sides, cranberry sauce, and a pumpkin pie). My role was primarily confined to rereading the directions and confirming that, yes indeed, you left the plastic bag on the turkey to bake.
7. Ate said dinner, watched a movie with the kids, got to bed by 9 pm.

Nice, right? It's a bit of a departure from our usual Thanksgiving, although the past few years have been a steady exercise in the art of letting good traditions go. I haven't cooked a Thanksgiving dinner since 2007 and I don't think I've made a pie since well before that (and for so many years I was dedicated to the making a pie that began with an uncooked pumpkin and a pile of flour and ended with something that was definitely different than what you could get at King Soopers, but not necessarily better). We hastily dropped the midday-meal tradition after the Family Fiasco of 2008 (it involved plate pushing and bread throwing by a seven-year-old who'd just moved and changed schools, was expected to endure the guarded tensions of having both divorced grandparents at the same event, and broke when asked to come to the table at 2 p.m.) (the fiascality of the tantrum was enhanced by a certain relative, who, instead of a gentle comment about how children are such sensitive instruments or, perhaps, a hearty laugh, commented acidly that she found his behavior "very disturbing" and that, furthermore, I ought to be careful--someone might call social services if they found out he preferred to sleep on the floor.) (GOD) Thanksgiving has always been about friends and family, and it will definitely continue to be--but sometimes it's nice to have it be about family members who actually enjoy each others' company.

Anyhow. While I might tweak with this year's formula a little--by adding some brussels sprouts, maybe, or remembering to pack some whipped cream--I think we've found ourselves a new tradition.

Tink, tink, tink, tink

...tink, tink, tink, tink, tink...

So, Silas found a pick (an ice pick? a climber's pick?) within about an hour of hour arriving at the cabin on Friday night. He finally, and reluctantly, relinquished it at approximately 1 pm on Sunday, when we got in the car to go home (Word of WisdomTM: ice picks + children + car = no). For those of you that can do the math, that's, oh, about 132 straight hours of hammering. All of the rocks around the cabin we stayed in now have little white marks on them. Also all of the rocks along the creek at the bottom of the hill. That kid has persistence, and also, apparently, gold fever. That's what he was doing, by the way: mining for gold. (Only 149 years too late! Sorry, kiddo!)

But! It was a wonderful weekend, nevertheless. We stayed at one of the cabins around the Glen Isle resort, which is a moldering old marvel of a historical lodge, with cheap cabins, lots of roads and trails, and easy access to the north fork of the Platte (and easier access to the little creek that empties into the north fork, which was a load off for the lazy parents among our group, which was all of us.) Hubs worked, I read the old magazines laying about the cabin, and my sister-in-law slept. Helen colored like a madwoman, at least when she wasn't out monitoring Si's progress. Their cousin kept tabs on the comings and goings of all visitors.

Every so often Hubs and I wish we had the means to buy some property in the mountains--to get ourselves a real summer cabin, something we can return to again and again, and pass down to the kids, a tangible piece of what I sometimes call their Colorado Heritage (usually while dragging them up a glacier or down a canyon). When I was growing up, I spent a few weeks every summer at the summer house of a friend, swimming, boating, and running wild in the woods, and it breaks my heart, sometimes, that we don't have the time or the means to provide this kind of summer to our kids. So far we haven't had any luck finding them friends with summer cabins, and short of winning the lottery, there's no way we're ever going to own a cabin. (Damn real estate bubble hasn't burst enough).

Then we go have a weekend the one just passed, and I start to think: who needs a damn cabin, anyway? It would be nothing but work, all summer long (that's what my friend's parents were doing, after all, while we swam and boated and ran wild. They were scraping and painting and floating out docks and fixing outboard motors and digging out privies and cooking, cleaning, and fixing ALL SUMMER LONG). Meanwhile, for about a hundredth of the price, we can go rent a cabin on the weekends we actually have available, and give our kids the gift of the whole entire state.

So. I haven't totally given up on the dream of a mountain cabin, but given the circumstances, I'm thinking we may actually have found a workable alternative.