For most of the people who come here from and either just go for a thanksgiving dinner to a friend's place or take the holidays and go out with their own family. But me and my husband spent a whole Thanksgiving week in the mountains with my American cousins, my uncle and my American aunt. There was no reception on our cell phones and the internet connection was as slow as a snail. Thanks to that we had the most amazing vacation of all times! :)
Since there was no cell phone reception we discarded our cell phones and kept them switched off in our rooms. We played board games, badminton, dart game, card games, slept well and most important of all talked to my cousins, uncle and aunt. We cooked together, went for hiking, ate a lot of food, had wine, laughed a lot and made merry! :)
Frankly speaking this was the kind of experience I haven't had with my immediate family in years! :)and it was such welcome change :) I could not believe that I can have this much fun! :) It was like going back to the childhood days of innocent fun!
One more exciting thing that we did was learn salsa on the eve of Thanksgiving from my cousin. It was amazing since I was doing salsa for the first time with my husband who is not so comfortable dancing and feels conscious very easily. But thanks to my dear cousin who made him feel at ease and comfortable enough to dance with me a dance that he had never tried before :)
The whole experience of setting up the thanksgiving dinner and then getting ready and having the dinner with the family, saying grace before the meal and also sharing what each one of us is thankful for was so sweet! :) And the food was so amazing that by the end of dinner I was feeling like a stuffed turkey myself :D and looking more like humpty dumpty dawdling from one place to another :D Oh it was pure joy! :)
Frankly speaking I have never spent so much time with all of my cousins and I was a little sceptical before going for the vacation. But its amazing how we gelled so well. My aunt had planned everything so immaculately and she kept us all engaged by suggesting some or the other activity at the end of which she would give prizes to the winners. And we grown up people would turn into small kids all excited to receive the goodies! :) Oh I felt like such kid :P
We went to the movies and I watched the Hunger games for the first time :) both the parts :) and enjoyed it thoroughly :) and also how my aunt would get excited at the movies like a kid and would scream so loud when some shocking scene would come up :P and how the girl sitting behind her would scream after that because she would get scared from my aunt's screaming! :D it was so much fun! :P
Oh and we also made absolutely adorable cookie houses and decorated the gingerbread man! :) Seems like we did all the stuff that little kids would do but hey I am still a little kid at heart and I thoroughly enjoyed decorating candies on top of the houses and also eating some of them :) sticking marshmallows and gum drops everywhere to make my houses look the prettiest! :)
We went to a trivia competition as a family and had so much fun even though we did not win and wrote completely ridiculous answers to some of the questions.. but it was amazing and we had such a good laugh about those silly things till the time we left from Poconos :P
We also went shopping as it is impossible to have an outlet mall nearby and not go shopping specially when the holidays are here! :D
All this makes me re-think the importance of festivals in our lives and what their actual intention is! :)
How wonderful life is and how these vacations and festivals give us the time to realize that and be thankful for everything we have...
I had a sweet and happy smile all the way coming back from Poconos to Pittsburgh...
If we can make such simple things joyful, life would become so many more times worth the grind that we put ourselves through daily!
And I have taken a break from my career in search of the same happiness that somehow went missing from my life between working and travelling and thinking about my husband who was so far away from me all that while and lots of big and small things that happen in our lives daily :P I am really glad things turned out the way they did! :)
I am feeling absolutely happy and blissful at the moment and all energized to take on anything! :)
So cheers to the happiness! :) May all of you have absolutely awesome holidays! :)
Love <3 <3
Payal
