Thursday, November 26, 2009

Happy Thanksgiving!!! 11.26.09

I sure hope everyone had a wonderful thanksgiving. Spending time with loved ones, taking time to give thanks for all that we have, and of course eat, eat, eat!!! 

Happy Thanksgiving from Michael & Rene

We had an incredible celebration here. Michael, once again, volunteered to head up the turkey day celebration. He worked very closely with both Elvira, the office manager at Marina Mazatlan, and Ray who is a boat broker with Mazatlan Yachts. Elvira performed her magic again this year, getting deals on everything imaginable. There were 120 tickets available…and they sold out.

The evening was wonderful. The setup/teardown committee did a great job of scouring the tables and chairs that were delivered and the decoration committee followed making the tables beautiful.

The captains lounge at Marina Mazatlan ready for Thanksgiving celebrants!

There were so many volunteers, it was mind blowing. Some helped with taking tickets at the door, some helped with selling drink tickets, pouring beer, wine, margaritas, clearing plates & silverware, counting linens & place settings both before and after the event, and ultimately, the tear down of all of the tables & chairs after the last partier left.

The day was filled with fun. I was able to get onto a Skype video call with my grandpa and mom & dad, and Sue, which was great. There was a non-denominational mass (I know, kinda an oxymoron, huh?!) with Father Ignacio where a handful of people joined together for songs, scripture, & communion. After the service, Father Ignacio performed a blessing of the fleet – he was in a large panga and shuttled up and down each and every finger of the marina and threw holy water on every boat, even the empty slips! We stood on the back of our boat as he drove by as we need all the blessings we can get for our travels. I believe he may have even given us an extra blessing.

The celebration started at 5:00 for Happy hour.

Time for Turkey!

Everyone invited was asked to bring hors d’oeuvres to share with the plan being for everyone to mingle, try out the different items from each table and loosen up! It worked last year….this year the crowd was a little different and there wasn’t much mingling going on. Also last year, the folks working the bar were painfully left out of the whole happy hour offerings so I volunteered to bring them goodies from each table. This turned into a lot of fun for me! “Um, Hi, my name is Rene from Ahea Kali. I am going to take 3 or 4 of your appetizers over to the folks working the bar….I promise it will make it over there. Yum….maybe I’ll need one more…” haha! I actually had a lot of fun mingling with everyone while doing my ‘job’. But the gesture was appreciated by Mike & Julie and Larry working the bar. And there were some really scrumptious offerings! My favorites were the homemade focaccia bread with goat cheese and a homemade cranberry maple sauce, a date stuffed with an almond which was then wrapped in bacon & baked, a piece of asparagus wrapped in a piece of prosciutto and baked, and one spicy cream cheese dip….YUM! All while happy hour was going on, a live band consisting of four cruisers performed – Lori was lead singer & guitar, Ken was bass guitar (they’re from S/V Esprit), Bill brought his drums from S/V Teka, and the harmonica player was off of S/V Althea (I forget his name…). They were AMAZING!!

Lori Davidson along with Ken & Mike playing during Thanksgiving!

Everyone was bummed when they stopped playing. Lori has an incredible voice, very bluesy, and both she and Ken has played with the jazz greats from San Francisco. Truly, truly amazing talent.

At 6:30 it was time for dinner! Table by table was alerted it was their turn and the serving went much smoother than last year. It was a full dinner! Turkey, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, yams, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, & dinner roll. Once everyone was served, seconds were offered as was dessert – our choice of either carrot cake or an almond cake – or both! Yum! After dinner & desert was finished, a DJ played music the rest of the night. Everyone had a wonderful time dancing the evening away. It was great to let loose & enjoy. I forget just how much I enjoy dancing and how infrequently I do it when I am back in the U.S. I’ll have to fix that.

There were the occasional setbacks – not enough ice, wrong type of bar delivered, a giant blow-up beer can which was part of ‘payment’ for the use of tables and chairs from Pacifico that was setup in the corner. But nothing that couldn’t be dealt with. The final partier left around 10:30 or so, all of the leftovers were gone, tables & chairs stacked, bar shut down, a preliminary count of inventory completed….and we were back on the boat by about 11:00 along with Mike & Julie. It was an amazing celebration, again. It makes us realize how thankful we are to be surrounded by such great people. I added more pictures to the photo album…enjoy.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone….
Rene & Michael

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