sizzler say what????

any of you that know me know that thanksgiving is my second favorite holiday EVER. i love it so much that one year i legitimately dressed up like a pilgrim. i think the rest of my family was in pajamas...

my thanksgiving two years ago consisted of me being sick (in true missionary style - you're either sick or miserably hot or cold), working all day as a new missionary, and finally, victoriously ending the day with a single thanksgiving jamon y queso empanada in the summer heat in the desert of paraguay. my companion and i walked home during the sunset eating those empanaditas, thankful for the sheer beauty of the paraguayan sky, which looked like this...

or maybe it was this day...

and then last year, thanksgiving brought a freak rainstorm that caught us and our lunch appointment by surprise. we ran for shelter inside of our friends' little stick hut of a house. we busily stuffed the holes in their roofs with clothes and newspaper so that water didn't pour in and turn the floor into mud (because it was a dirt floor). my companion and i had to literally kick the chickens out because they kept running inside, and hey, that's just not sanitary to have a chicken on the bed next to you. (i say that jokingly, because to the house with holes in the roof and walls and water flooding in, chicken infestation was probably the least of their worries.) and yet, we sat there eating on their multipurpose bed/front room(only room)-couch talking about what we were grateful for. we even made turkey hands and wrote the things we were most grateful for.

my comp and i even spent the next day, which was a weekly planning session, eating one of those rotisserie chickens from a little street vendor that i swore to myself i would never eat, but did. 

needless to say, i have been looking forward to this thanksgiving for two years now. i've been looking forward for the tradition of the holiday. because heaven only knows that my last two have been far from traditional. 

my intentions in writing this blog post were to say how my thanksgiving had been ruined this year. my family's going to logan to be with my old (or should i say aged? is that nicer?) grandma who invited us. a few days ago, however, she decided it was too much work to make the thanksgiving meal and to clean it up, so she wants to go to sizzler instead. 

yeah, you heard right.

this place...

i may or may not have completely and totally freaked out. i said things like, this is my first thanksgiving back in the united states in two years and you expect me to go to sizzler??! i wouldn't even go to sizzler on a regular day, let alone for my second favorite holiday ever. WHAAAT IN THE WORLD IS MY GRANDMA THINKING?!!

it turns out, i'm pretty opinionated.

but as i was writing about my thanksgiving experiences i had in the past, i couldn't help but think, wow... you can really have thanksgiving anywhere. 

if i can have thanksgiving walking down a hot, dusty road or inside of a falling apart shack with rain gushing through holes, then gosh dang it, i can have thanksgiving at sizzler!

so yes, this thanksgiving, while most normal families are sitting down to beautiful tables with turkey and stuffing and that awesome green jello with cheese on top and the sweet potatoes covered in marshmallows (yum!), my parents, my two brothers, my grandma and i will be heading out to go to sizzler. 

my dad says they have a good salad bar. i guess we'll see. maybe if i'm really lucky, they'll have a thanksgiving empanada for me.