Thanksgiving

I hope all of you had a great Thanksgiving. We sure did. I believe the final head count for the day was 33. Yep. 33. We managed to get everyone seated though it was a bit crowded. It all worked out and I was not even stressing. Told myself I would not stress. We had 2 turkeys, pounds of mashed potatoes and stuffing, green beans, yams, veggies, gravy......... the works. After dinner there were pies galore. What a feast!! I didn't get any photos of the day.

Friday I chose to sleep rather than shop. Then we hopped in the car and headed to San Fernando to visit the Mission for Greg's Mission report for school. We toured the Mission and I took lots of photos. It's really a pretty Mission. Bob Hope is also buried there.

Friday night the kids each had a friend over for a "sleep over". Well, I think the boys finally got to sleep around 2:30 am. The girls were earlier. But just a bit earlier. yawn! I did manage to order our Christmas cards and download almost 200 photos to be printed. I did have a productive evening :)

Saturday I took the kids to see BOLT. What a great movie. The kids all agreed it was sad and happy at the end.

After the movie I got brave and took 2 very tired and extremely cranky kids shopping. Argh! Evy needed a dress for Christmas. So, off we went with grumbles all the way. We lucked out and found a dress and all was well. Not quite as I also drug the kids to a few more stores for some things I needed to get.

Saturday night I went with Julie to see AUSTRALIA. Awesome! I highly recommend it. Learned things I didn't even know. and that's a good thing.

Sunday was another sleep in day and a day for much needed shopping. After church I ditched the rest of the family to get some shopping done. I am pleased to say I am just about done with my shopping! Yay me :) The rest will be fairly easy to do.

Well, that's about it for our Holiday weekend. This week is a busy one. School, riding lessons, Christmas programs and more soccer practice.

I'm done with Thanksgiving left overs and pumpkin pie. Onto other food now. I have chili cooking in the crock pot and is shore smells yummy.

Hope you all had a great weekend and have a very good week.

Thanksgiving

I am a little late getting these posted, but here are some photos from our Thanksgiving. We hosted at our house, and had about 30 people here throughout the day. It was hectic, but fun.
We set up tables in the garage and hung plastic over the shelves to give it a little
"homey" atmosphere. Most importantly was that everyone could sit all together.

Rich brougt over 2 turkeys in the morning. One cooked in the oven, the other in a roasting pan in the garage. Now our garage smelled like yummy turkey too! Everyone else pitched in and brought the rest of the dinner items and desserts. I made some appetizers (cheese, crackers and veggies) .

It was a little hectic getting all the dishes heated up after the turkey was out of the oven but we did it. We did buffet style this year rather than passing the food around the table. All the food was set up on the kitchen table and Rich and I made sure the bowls were kept full, turkey platter was piled high and the gravy was hot.

I was the last one to sit down and eat but did not mind. I had a plate of my favorite meal (well one of them). I even got seconds on stuffing! Oh, I could just eat an entire bowl of stuffing, forget everyting else.
Some cleaning fairies cleaned up the kitchen by the time I got back in. Guess it helps to linger longer over my meal and have time to sit and chat. (Thank you !!)

The guys enjoyed the football games while the kids enjoyed the trampolene and just playing together.
We all dove into our turkey cake and yummy pies. I could have just sat and ate pies all night too. Can you tell, I love to eat? Well, more so on holidays.

Enjoy the pictures :) (and please bear with me, I have a hard time spacing out the pictures and captions on blogger)

The day's menu

I had to have my hot Chai tea

Uncle Roger and Aidan having a jumping contest

Roger on the trampolene perfecting his jumping tricks

Evelyn and Victoria jump for turkey

Aidan taking Nicole for a walk

Someone's in the kitchen with ..... Mary, Mallory, Rich, Clara Alice and Matt (hey get away from that turkey! and no more wine for you! Are these potatos ever going to be done?)

The garage all transformed into our "dining room". Sorry, a little dark, but it was well lit when we ate

Firefighter in training cousin Matt with Evelyn and Victoria

Turkey chef ~ Rich

Great eats!!

Time to dine! Greg, Matt, Miles, Marianne, Sam, Michelle, Aidan, David, Ryan, Mallory, Nicole

Al, Evelyn, Roger, Therese, Clara Alice, Clarence, Mary, Michael, Nancy, Vicoria, Valerie (missing: me Tom, Ron. Patty and John just left. Eric, Chrissy, Nathan and Jake have not arrived yet.)

Aidan wondering what is going on but enjoying his place at the head of the table

M~G~M aka Miles, Greg, Matt