Thanks for Thankgiving

I'm most grateful tonight for the fact that we were able to have Thanksgiving at Mom and Dad's house this year. Mom has been pretty sick, and it was iffy up until the last minute on whether she'd be able to handle all the hulabaloo. But she insisted she wanted it at her house, and we bowed to her wishes. Everyone helped out.....as our family does when things are tough. Some of us helped with prep cooking, some helped set up, some helped serve dinner, some helped clean up. We tried to leave the house as organized and clean as we could. And Mom told me, when I kissed her good-bye, that she'd had a good day. Mission accomplished. We tend to forget to take pictures in the craziness of having dinner with 20 or so people. But Hubby did take a few....and here are some random ones: Dad all ready to make his famous "Turkey Carcass Soup". He boils his turkey carcass while we're all still there in readiness for making the best soup in the world. My niece Laura doing the traditional, "olives on the fingers" trick. This is a talent taught to children in our family when they're very young and passed down through the generations. We thought Laura might have to go find some super-sized olives this year....but she managed.

Our immediate family invites a couple of "stragglers". My cousin Paul is an only child and both of his parents have passed away. We enjoy inviting him and his very dry wit to our family gatherings.

My brother John and his wife Ruth are just about the only two who actually posed and took a nice picture.

My Aunt Izzy, sender of the infamous Omaha Steaks. To finish off that story, she called a couple of days later and said, "That bugger Tag, he gave my money back. I'll fix his wagon. I'm putting in an order for Omaha Steaks!" Sure enough, we received them the day before Thanksgiving! Can you believe this lovely lady will be 85 in December? And she just passed her senior citizen driving test! Now she's good for another five years!

There were many more people there, we just didn't get any good pictures of them! It was a great day!