Thanksgiving 2011

Crazy stat: 14 kids, 12 boys
Now that both Meg's and my parents have ripped their roots forever from Oregon, we had to find a different way to celebrate Thanksgiving. Meg's sister in Dallas (Oregon) decided to host Thanksgiving, while Meg offered our place for Christmas. I'm the last of the Asays in Oregon, but Meg has two brothers and one sister still around, and her younger brother Paul and his wife drove from Utah to visit, including a couple of days spent with us in Portland.

The drive to Dallas took about 90 minutes, and took us through parts of Keizer and Salem, but fortunately no one uttered a desire to return to our former home. Aaron and I wanted to play in the annual soccer game, so we suited up and drove over to a nearby park to join the in-progress game. In the past, when we played in Sherwood, the weather never mattered much because of the all-season turf field at the park across from their homestead; but it had been raining all day, every day for a week--today included--and the fields we played on were so sloppy with mud, one could barely move up and down the field without slipping (in case you wondered, FiveFingers don't work well in slick grass and mud). We played for about two hours, long enough for my clothes to become soaked through and my digits to become numb and useless--I'm still not sure how I piloted the van back to the Jones' house safely. Aaron rode home in his underwear, as he played a tad more aggressively than me, and needed to shed his clothes to get dry and stay warm.

Three new babies on the way--
and at least one is a boy!
Even though only half the Booren bunch was gathered, we still had 10 adults, 14 kids, and three in utero. But it didn't seem as crazy and loud as usual; maybe I'm just going deaf. Despite everybody eating turkey, the day ended with a huge, multi-player wrestling match in the living room. The Jones kids are, how shall we say, undersized, but they make up for it with grit, determination, and motors that don't every die. It helps that Uncle John, their dad, is a wrestling coach at Dallas High, where he teaches. None of the other kids could pin a Jones, despite a glaring difference in size. Our house's layout won't provide such a venue for Christmas, I'm afraid, despite Meg saying the kids could wrestle on the concrete floor in our basement.

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