Hear now, my heresy: the traditional Thanksgiving meal as portrayed by Norman Rockwell holds little charm for me. For a variety of reasons, that grandma lowering that bird on to the table is, in my mind, consulting her watch and thinking, “All that work is gonna be annihilated in ten minutes. And I don’t even like turkey that much. Damn.”

For all those varieties of reasons, my own little nuclear family has adopted the custom of the destination Thanksgiving, where we decamp as a group to another place and do something, well, a little offbeat. One year Dad, Interrupted and the little Boy, Interrupteds (the Girl, Interrupteds were with their dad that holiday) skied off to Vegas and visited the late, great Star Trek Experience. In my opinion, you haven’t lived until you’ve given thanks over The Holy Rings of Betazed and learned how to burp the Klingon alphabet from a real Klingon.

Over the years our family has done things like tour the USS Midway and ghost hunt through Old Town San Diego graveyards at midnight, with nary a turkey in sight.

But my favorite destination Thanksgiving has got to be Disneyland.

Our first November Adventure was twelve years ago, when I picked up the girls at school a little early on Wednesday and told them I had to drag them and their brothers up to my office across town. On the way, we ‘accidentally’ bumped into Dad, Interrupted and two close family friends (who didn’t know it, but they were about to become engaged to be married) and decided over lunch that we didn’t like turkey all that much and so, what the hell! Maybe we should just go to Disneyland.

And then we did just that, to the astonishment of our children, who had no idea that we had planned the whole thing, down to the last packed suitcase, without their knowledge. My theory was that kids who know they’re going somewhere fun manage to get sick at the worst possible moment and somehow the whole trip gets canceled. So I just didn’t tell them we were going.

It’s a testament to how crazy I am that the kids didn’t believe we were going to Disneyland until they saw the Matterhorn towering over Anaheim; years later, I was astonished to find out how ticked off my oldest daughter was that I would do something so heinous as to lie about going to Disneyland!

This year, we told them. We had to; there was no way we could get everyone corralled together otherwise. The kids have always traveled well, and this year was no exception. We had prime rib dinner in our hotel suite and spent four wonderful days luxuriating through The House that the Mouse Built, courtesy of careful planning and thoughtful touches supplied by Dad, Interrupted, who orchestrated the entire trip.

I know I say this every year, honey, but every year you make it true: this was the best Thanksgiving ever.

© E.S. Evans 2010