I'm going to remember what I can about four days before Thanksgiving, which is always a Sunday.
2013. Oddly enough, I don't remember much about this day. I would have had to be at tithing settlement, I'm sure. I think I went home teaching, and we took turns saying what we were thankful for. I think Autumn Tullis told me she liked my turkey tie--which is always a favorite.
2012. My home teachee, Zach, who was also the Sunday School president, asked me to teach the marriage and family prep class with Laura Molnar. I went over to Laura's apartment, Elite 6; I hadn't met her before. I asked her the typical where-are-you-from-what-are-you-studying questions, and then we discussed our lesson plan. When we gave our lesson, we mostly just asked a lot of questions. That night, my roommate Scott and I went over to Elite 5 to see our home teachees, Emily and Natausha. Someone else was there who Scott knew but I didn't; he called me Mr. Turkey Tie. After we had been there for some time, Megan Ward said, "You're wearing a turkey tie!" Her roommates thought it was funny that she just noticed that, since their friend had drawn attention to it when we got there.
2011. After church, we had a linger-longer Thanksgiving dinner. I think I talked with Meleea Larsen while we were in line. I was happy to have pecan pie, but it was a little hard to cut with a plastic knife. That night we had a fireside with Sheri Dew. She made reference to the time she almost got married, but she didn't tell us the whole story. Jon Schmidt played his own version of "A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief."
2010. I wore my turkey tie to church, even though I hadn't planned to, and I was glad I did. I blessed the sacrament, and afterward the Wortleys, who were a married mentoring couple, noticed my tie. That night I went to Peter Moosman's house for home teaching, as we home taught someone who was his home teacher. His mom had Thanksgiving decorations up, and she had a lot of the same things I had, including the Fisher Price Little People Mayflower. I was glad to see that I wasn't the only one who considered candy corn suitable for Thanksgiving. Our home teachee asked Peter if his mom decorated that much for Christmas. Peter said no, but his sister Michelle corrected him.
2009. We had dinner with the Hastings family, and their daughter Sammy was throwing up in another room. I think Sister Hastings wasn't there for some reason. The other kids were laughing about the throwing up. This might have been the time I pointed out a funny blurb in the Ensign--one issue had shown a picture of a man being sucked into a TV because of a video game addiction, and another issue told of a kid who had seen that picture and said to his friend, "Let's go outside so we don't get sucked into the TV!"
2008. We attended the Davenport Branch. The Corrigan family spoke; Sister Corrigan she hated Thanksgiving, even more than St. Patrick's Day. That night we had dinner at the Kieffers'; they had a bowl full of tree seeds that looked like tiny pumpkins. We went downstairs in their house to show them our promotional video for Christmas around the World. This is my journal entry for the day:
"Today was a good sacrament meeting. We sang Thanksgiving hymns, and the new family, the Corrigans, gave excellent talks.
"After church we saw a few people, including Sister Henrietta Camel, and the part-active family the Moores, whom we can teach. We had dinner with the Kieffers, and a member visit with the Wilkersons.
"Two years ago today was Thanksgiving. In the morning we went to the store and bought crackers for my niece, then had Thanksgiving in Fillmore in an empty house. I remember watching A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving on a portable DVD player."
2007. I was in Nashville, and I was preparing for church with my new mission slacks. The water just beaded up on the pants when I was ironing them. I thought that was impressive, but I was not impressed that they literally tailored the pants three inches too big. We loaded up in the car to go to their stake conference near the Nashville Temple. When we got in the car, I helped buckle three-year-old Preston, and I told him he couldn't do something. He said sadly to his parents, "Shu-shu [uncle] talk to me!" I think this was the day when Ya-ping was getting after David for something, and Preston said, "Mommy! Don't talk to Ba-ba!" We all found that funny, and David said something about him defending him. We got to the conference late, so we had to sit on a stage at the very back of the last overflow. I liked the speaker's talk about him talking to a guy who attended church in blue jeans and later got baptized. As we left the stake center, their friend called out "Melvilles!" On our drive home, David was asking me questions that he thought I needed to answer before I went on my mission. I was annoyed by them. That afternoon, we took bikes to go let me practice. We were at a school parking lot, and I was doing a fair job riding around. I wanted to take one last jaunt behind the school, and I tried to turn and fell. My ankle really hurt, and I couldn't move it. I was hoping David would come around, since he was on the other side of the school, and see that I couldn't move. I seem to remember seeing a nickel on the ground. David eventually came around and saw that I was hurt, so then he got the car and helped me into it. Then we drove back to their apartment. He was trying to call our parents to get insurance information, while I sat in the car thinking. I was supposed to go into the MTC in a week and a half. Could I go with a broken leg? It was nice to think that I might be able to stick around home for the holidays--but that meant that when I came home, I would come home around the bleak time of February. Eventually we went to a medical place. In the waiting room, Preston saw Peanuts on a comics section of a newspaper, and said, "Is that Charlie Brown?" None of us knew that he knew who that was. Some teenage boys were making funny noises at him, which made him laugh. I felt like a bad uncle, that strangers were entertaining him but I wasn't. Then we went to a hospital. One of the doctors was in David's ward; when I said I was worried I might have to postpone my mission, he said they would probably let me go with a broken leg. Eventually, they came and told me that my ankle was sprained, and I felt silly for having to go through all that for just a sprain. She wanted me to try to walk on it, but I couldn't, so she said, "That's not going to work," and they got me crutches. Then we returned to the car. Preston had noticed that they had taken off my shoe, and he was worried about that--"Shu-shu shoe?" he repeated several times. At one point, Ya-ping got a little impatient with him asking, so she made a frustrated noise, and he started crying. On our way home, they stopped at the store because they needed milk for Preston, even though it was Sunday. At home, I wanted to watch the Thanksgiving episode of That Girl, which I had brought. I remember being able to maneuver around enough to take a one-footed shower and get down on the air mattress. We made arrangements for me to go to the airport the next day.
2006. I remember sitting in my room doing homework while watching a documentary on the Pilgrims. My mom had made some pumpkin cake cookies, which I was delighted to have.
2004. Sue's family came over to see newborn Preston. At one point, my mom was holding Allie and said to her, "Do you want Uncle Mark to take you out to look at the turkey?" That made Allie immediately put out her arms for me to take her, as she loved going out to the inflatable turkey. Sue was saying, "Are we going to watch a Christmas movie?" Jesse said we should watch The Nightmare Before Christmas, since it was "perfect" because it was between Halloween and Christmas. I wanted to watch an episode of The Munsters, "Grandpa Leaves Home," since I suspected it was a Christmas episode but wanted to be sure. Sue was referring to the show as "The Monsters," and my mom had to correct her. She liked the line, "There's a showbiz family for you; they even go home with their makeup on!"
2003. We had one of those meetings where you share your favorite hymn. I got up and told a story involving "Hum Your Favorite Hymn," and then I said I wanted to sing "I Believe in Christ." (I only remember this because I kept a journal at that time, but the journal entry is a little personal.)
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