Thanksgiving 2022

The last time we celebrated Thanksgiving in Iowa, the Pandemic was in full swing: school and work were both fully remote, vaccines were still a month away from being distributed to front-line workers, and only 272,000 Americans had died from COVID. As a result, we were the only ones that ventured to Iowa for the holiday (we celebrated with the rest of the clan via Zoom) and we did so by arriving a week and a half before the holiday and participating in school and work from the IC.

This year, the kids had in-person school through Tuesday and since Owen's now a junior and Nora is in their first year at a new school (and had a high school interview originally scheduled for Tuesday afternoon), we couldn't really leave early. But since most of the family was gathering (Kara had to cancel due to care for an ailing cat) and promises are promises, we headed out at 5:15 am EST on Wednesday morning to drive the 13 hours and 45 minutes and arrive at Grandma and Grandpa Z's for dinner.

After a night of visiting, eating and drinking, we woke the next morning in a frenzy to roast turkey, bake ham, make rolls, peel potatoes and fix a sundry of side dishes (Well, some of us did. Others spent the morning enjoying World Cup Soccer and various football games...). Around one o'clock, Pete, Jeannine and Bernie stopped by on their way to Jeannine's mom's to visit, fix a chair, and play the Zimmerman Family Memory Game (which includes such pairs as "Date Night," "Nucleus," "Fam Jam 2.0," and "Big Head").

After the Marshalltown Grady's left, we finished making dinner and sat down to the feast followed by pie and other sweets, and some adult beverages. Most of us faded quickly except for the Schaumburg Zimmermans, who rallied at their hotel for some hot tub time.

The next morning, it was fun family photo time before Dave had to leave for his flight to Colorado via Des Moines and the Schaumburg Zimmermans headed home. Once the house emptied, we took the opportunity to swing by the pond to snag some sweet corn and visit with Leanna and Grace (with a brief drop-in of Ken and Helen).

After celebrating festis lefteroveris with Grandma and Grandpa Z, we spent the night folding laundry and packing in anticipation of our two-day drive back. The traffic was light and the weather beautiful on Saturday, which probably should have convinced us to forge ahead rather than stopping at our usual halfway point in Maumee. But it didn't.  After an early dinner and bedtime, we awoke the next morning to pouring rain, fog and worsening traffic, which made the rest of the drive back less relaxing. Still, we utilized Wavze to avoid three separate accidents and made it to Katherine's by 3:30 pm in order to celebrate John's 79th birthday. Once the candles were blown out and cake consumed, we finally headed home at which point we declared Thanksgiving officially over and then crashed.

Before getting up the next morning for school and work...

(To see all of our Thanksgiving pictures, click here.)