Thankful Day 23

I have spent the last week in the Lone Star State with family, and therefore have fallen extremely behind on my Thankful Thirty blog series. My sincerest apologies to you faithful readers. In order to catch up, these few thankful blogs are going to be a little shorter than usual. Thanks for loving me through it. Y’all are just absolute dolls.


November 23: Carry-On Luggage
Yes and AMEN for carry-ons. You better believe that I am the girl who straps like as many bags as I can onto my body, ties bags together and stuffs an inordinate amount of things into a very small space in order to get out of checking a bag. Checking your bags is ASKING for your trip to end in catastrophe. I like to tell myself that I am an under-packer but that is far from the truth. Especially when I had to fit not only the normal visit home items in my carry-on luggage, but also a bear blanket, loin cloth and all of the things I needed for the Brown-Rice Family Thanksgiving Extravaganza complete with Pilgrim and Indian costumes (as pictured here):

God knows the Brown-Rices all needed a little break from reality and I am just the person to give it to us! We had a Pilgrims vs. Indians party and Grandmommy was the big old (cute as hell) turkey - obviously because she is the most important part that brings all of us together. She was the greatest turkey you have ever seen and at one point was laughing too hard to hold her orange construction paper beak in her mouth. She was such a sport and we laughed until our stomachs hurt at her tail feathers. Kaleb was also a riot with his suicidal pilgrim class act. We thought it was funnier for no one to smile because that’s how old-timey pictures looked. He played a very convincing role, and any activity that allows my clone of a broskie, Carson, to go shirtless is A-OKAY with him. He made an adorable Indian chief and it ended up being the greatest idea I have had since moving to Colorado.

Anyways back to being thankful for carry-ons. I love to get off the plane and mock the people waiting on checked baggage. I laugh at them in their waiting game misery of hoping their bag comes spinning around that moving tram. I laugh mostly because in previous flights, (when I naively checked my bags) mine never came through. It’s like they put a special, different colored bagtag on it that says “This bag doesn’t really need to go to the right place. Just throw it in a pile and hope for the best.” Seriously though, checked bags are for morons and I love living life in the fast lane with my roller bag and backpack. (And purse, and pillow, and blanket, etc.) I was out of the airport at DFW before those other plane riders even knew what hit ‘em.

So in the spirit of mile-long holiday security lines and randomly selected passenger pat downs and inevitable lack of overhead space, I am thankful for carry-on luggage.