Thanksgiving 2014

Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday. I love the sentiment, the food, and the time off from work. Typically, though, it's been a stressful time for me. We spend Thanksgiving with my in-laws, and while I enjoy spending time with them, I miss my own family and the traditions I remember from childhood. It's also hard because my father-in-law lives alone in a quiet house. The abrupt onslaught of three, noisy, wild kids (and their cousin) is hard on him. I get that. I don't know what it's like to be used to a quiet house, but I can understand that it's somewhat jarring to be invaded all of a sudden!

This year, however, Thanksgiving was amazing! Everyone got along (the adults, I mean...the kids fought as much as they normally do!). The food was delicious (if I do say so myself!) and the time spent together was enriching.

We packed rather quickly on Tuesday night and I was glad to have our Dot & Dot Travel bags because they kids were able to get all their stuff together on their own.  We headed out the night before we had originally planned to leave because of winter storm Cato (why do we name winter storms, now?!) We got there safely, on Tuesday night just in time to say hi and go to bed. Thankfully, we travel in our pajamas! It rained all night, but quickly turned over to thick snow on Wednesday morning, so I am glad we traveled early.

The snow on Wednesday morning

My brother-in-law and his family didn't arrive until Wednesday evening, so my kids had the house to themselves for most of that first day. They did pretty well with getting into everything and fighting just often enough to remind me they were there.

He was hungry and throwing a fit because he didn't want any of the choices I offered (Pretty sure this was more about tired than hunger)

He was much happier later when he got a chance to wear the John Deere gear!

I spent most of Thursday in prep, cook and eat mode. For our Thanksgiving meal we had turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing with sausage, gravy (that I'm getting better at every year), green bean casserole, orange-cranberry sauce, crescent rolls, and Ken's dad's oyster casserole. It was all delicious. I'll take the men's word on the oyster casserole!!

And doughnut snowmen for breakfast!

Friday and Saturday were pretty typical day-after-feast days. We didn't do much except play, read, and watch TV. Oh, and eat leftovers. On Saturday my sister-in-law went through a bunch of stuff in the basement. We had a full truck load of stuff that went to Goodwill and another load that went to the dump. It was a lot of work, but it felt good to get it all cleaned out. I only wish I had worn my pedometer!

We left late Saturday evening and again got home in time to go to bed. The kids were exhausted from the trip and it was good to be home. This year will go down in the memory books as a great Thanksgiving!

Ken made it through the snow to celebrate with us, even though he had to work the day before and after.

Cousins...mostly still