MISSING: Mama Bear

Welcome back, dear readers. I hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving. I'm pretty sure you will all be thankful for the many excellent blog posts to come here at the tudor house the rest of this year, but since Thanksgiving has come and gone, we can all quit worrying about what we already have and are thankful for and start focusing on what we WANT for Christmas, the most joyful time of the year. I'm pretty sure that's the meaning of the holiday season....right?

I can only imagine your joy on Thanksgiving week was dampened a bit by my infrequent posting, but as I tried to explain on Thursday, my illness (self-diagnosed cat scratch fever, courtesy of the cat) slowed me down a bit prior to Turkey Day. I would have been back to posting on Friday, had a precious member of my family not gone missing.

Yes, Mama Bear, the giant teddy who lives with my parents, appears to have been kidnapped from her home on Thanksgiving night. She was last seen sitting in her favorite armchair, having devoured an entire pumpkin pie. I guess none of us saw the crime in our turkey comas. We are not supposed to involve the police, but the ransom note didn't say anything about blogging, so I think this is okay. (I'm a bit offended at how the kidnappers have referred to her as "it." Don't they know she's a real part of our family?)

Mama Bear, if your kidnappers let you have Internet access, I'm sure you're reading this post. We miss you, and we will do whatever it takes to get you back home where you belong. Just don't fall into the whole Stockholm Syndrome thing.

I suspect my cousins. Which cousins, I'm not sure - there were a bunch of them at the house on Thursday night. But kidnappings are something of a family tradition in my life, you see. Your family has a secret recipe for pecan pie, maybe, but mine has a strong tradition of low-level crime. It all started years ago when Mama Bear was taken from our house and sent us photos of herself kayaking, climbing trees, and generally having a ball. She eventually returned, but then one of those Taco Bell bobble-head dogs showed up in our Christmas white elephant exchange...only to be stolen at the end of the night. Our families went back and forth for years, kidnapping various toys and sending each other ransom notes. One of the high points (low points?) was when one family brought a bowling ball to the white elephant exchange and it ended up in  our toilet when everyone left the house. This is normal, right?

Anyway, we all thought the fun was over until this summer, when Mama Bear snuck out and came to my wedding:

She is such a party animal. Of course she'd be in the photo booth.

And now she's gone again. Mama Bear, come home to us. Then help my family plan our revenge.

I hope you all had a Thanksgiving just as eventful as mine. Other than dealing with the kidnapping, mine mainly involved watching movies from the Redbox, watching movies at the theater, catching up on a bit of TV on the old DVR and doing a teensy bit of Black Friday shopping from the comfort of my couch. I could really get used to four-day weekends.