Amateur Blathering: A Fiery Thanksgiving!

I was originally going to post my Friday 5 today, but given the events that happened yesterday during Thanksgiving I must post about that instead!

Yesterday's Thanksgiving day celebrations were going along just as smooth and normal...like in previous years. Everyone arrived at The Mrs.' grandma's house around noon. Lunch was served - turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, corn, coleslaw, rolls and of course desserts (pumpkin roll and strawberry cake). The pumpkin roll was amazing, btw!

After dinner we watched the Patriots beat up on the Lions and then proceeded to play some cards - Kings was the game of choice for the afternoon. Before you ask, yes...I did lose, but what else is new when it comes to cards? During one round of Kings we all noticed an odd smell in the air - smelled like smoke. At first we didn't think anything of it since it was very cold outside and it sort of smelled like a wood-burning furnace. The card game went on and then all of a sudden The Mrs.' aunt said something to the effect of "there is a fire in the backyard!" Now, luckily the fire was not in their backyard...it was in their neighbors' backyard.

This next part may not sound too weird if one were to be living in the country or something, but keep in mind that we were having Thanksgiving in a suburb of Minneapolis...anything but the country. So back to the fire...once we all heard there was a fire we jumped out of our seats to see what was going on and sure enough the fire had fully engulfed the neighbors meat smoker...yep, meat smoker. Apparently the Hmong neighbors like to smoke various meats in their backyard - from what we could gather it was either bear or deer that they were trying to smoke!!! I am going to go out on a limb here...but I am pretty sure that a homemade meat smoker in your backyard in the city is against fire code. So we all see this fire and immediately we call the fire department, because it is dangerously close to The Mrs.' grandma's garage. We get word that the fire department is on their way and so logically what do we all do??? We go outside to get a better look, of course! At this point the smoke smell turned into a nasty burning meat smell so we decided to move our vehicles to the street so the smell didn't get inside them. The police showed up first and then the fire department showed up and started to put out the fire. The best part of all of this was that the owners of the house with the burning smoker didn't even realize anything was on fire until the fire department showed up and had already dragged a fire hose through their backyard!

It was definitely a crazy afternoon and it was a Thanksgiving I will NEVER forget! Below are some pictures I captured on my phones camera - sorry for the poor quality, but I didn't have my regular camera. Hopefully everyone else had a fun and safe Thanksgiving!