Thanksgiving with Family, and lots of it!

On Thanksgiving day I drove down to my parent's house and had a great little Thanksgiving dinner with my parents and my Grammy. It was just the four of us, but we had everything to make it a traditional Thanksgiving dinner: Turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, stuffing, cranberry sauce, good bread and I made Winter White Puree. It was a relaxing dinner with good conversation. We somehow got talking about short-lived jobs that we've had and I found out that my Grammy had a job scooping ice cream at the community pool when she was younger, but they only let her do it for one day because she made the scoops too big! After dinner we had pie with generous helpings of whipped cream. It was a great evening.

The next day John, Jill, Nathaniel, Sebastian and Emerson came before lunch and Maureen, John and Liam came shortly after them. Once they were there, the doorbell rang and we weren't expecting anyone else (Dan had to work and couldn't join us). But we opened the door and sure enough - It was DAN! He walked in with his camera and totally surprised everyone, especially my mom. She teared up and was just so happy to have the whole family in one place. Unfortunately, we couldn't get a photo of everyone, but here's one that was taken while Jill and Mo had the cameras. That's John, Mom, Dan, me and Dad in the back, (little) John and Nathaniel standing in front of us, and Sebastian, Grammy, Emerson and Liam on the bench.


Here's a fun photo of me with all of my nephews. It was SO fun to have them all in one place.


It's tough for our family to get together and not start playing some sort of board game. And my parents are great at keeping around their old games. They have a Clue board from the mid-70s, Scrabble from god knows when and this amazing 40-year-old Yahtzee set. This cup is actually felt-lined so that it's not as noisy as the plastic cups they give you now. Pretty amazing.


Everyone has fun playing Yahtzee! Especially me. Here I am demonstrating how you have to hold the cup on both ends because the bottom falls out of the old cup.

Emerson is doing a good job of picking up on the family tradition:


The other game that was played this weekend was Wii! My dad got one for his birthday about a month ago and the older boys really loved it. And by "older boys", I mean my brothers and dad, too. Mom, Jill, Mo and I got to play a little bit, but the guys spent a lot more time on it than we did. John and Nathaniel really got into it, it was hard to tear them away:

It was such a great day and so fun to have everyone in one place. Hopefully it will happen again, sooner rather than later. I certainly have a lot to be thankful for.