Rome, Fire, Oil, $2, Saratoga, Bananas, Jovial, Addictions, Gullible & Lucky

I just returned home from visiting my sister for a few days.
She has a bit of a garage sale/thrift store/giveaway addiction.

(I've been told you should still consider your addictions addictions even if you're good at them.)

She also has a Cook Enough for Everyone to Eat Twenty Times addiction.

She baked six pies, one cake, one ham, one turkey, one four gallon tub of dressing, mashed potatoes and cream gravy, yeast rolls and at least a few other things. And she was only one of the ten or so people who brought multiple items. Needless to say, I brought home a lot of food and will probably not need to cook for the next week.

After we at our Thanksgiving lunch, we drove back to Cindy's house (one half-block away -- yes, we drove, that's how Real Country Texans travel one half-block away -- and when in Rome...). She had been bragging about this $2 fire pit she bought at a church garage sale, and since the weather was gorgeous, well.

She, her husband Gary and I enjoyed this $2 gem.
Along with the strangest alcoholic banana concoction I've ever tasted.

I had two drinks and ended up dancing to AC/DC around the pit. I haven't drank two drinks in a while, and it made me a very Jovial Traci. I brought my severely underused digital camera outside and made a number of strikingly bad (trans. - boring) videos of, you guessed it, nothing but the fire.

We went back inside her house when it was already dark. It was only six-thirty!

That was two nights ago now. From the time I left her house until the time I drove home (two hours) she had already posted a number of photos from the holiday on facebook. Here are two of them, of me.

The first is of Gary & I chatting about something I no longer remember specifically.
Something about oil rigs, I think.  

The second is from after lunch.

Two of the four blonde girls in the family are spinning me around listlessly.  And plotting my demise.  See how I'm the only adult gullible (er, I mean, happily willing) enough to join in on the We-Just-Ate-a-Lot-of-Sugar-and-We-Want-to-Play antics?

I'd share the rest with you, but I had my camera and haven't yet seen the photos I shot -- so you'll have to wait. I know, I know, it will be tough. 

Because, obviously, this is some highfalutin celebrating on which you don't dare want to miss out!

p.s. I have a way of being misunderstood on this blog, so, to state it clearly: 

I truly had a great time. 
My family only becomes more and more kind, interesting and beautiful over the years. 

I am very lucky they love me so much.