Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving this year was spent with Paul's side of the family. Every year we trade off on Thanksgiving and Christmas between our two families. Its been a great system so far and hopefully no one gets their feelings hurt because its already decided where we spend the holidays. We had Paul's brother Roland and his family (up from Nevada) spend the night with us on Wednesday before we all went to his sister Carmen's for dinner and a slumber party on Thursday. Carmen is the ultimate hostess so we had a great time. Good food, good company, and I barely saw the older two kids since they were so busy playing with cousins. I had some Black Friday shopping I wanted Paul to do at 5am Friday morning but he and his brothers-in-law like to stay up late playing shoot-em-up computer games. Carmen's rule was they couldn't start their games till 11pm, she wanted them to socailize with the rest of us. So I was sure there was no way Paul would be up in time to be at a store at 5. Well, being the efficient guy he is, he just never went to bed! The guys were still gaming at 4:45 when Paul had to get moving or else live with the wrath of Tiff. He did a great job and got what we were looking for for a good deal. I used to love the whole early morning Black Friday shopping but now I would rather just sleep.

Darcy reminds me of the kid in "The Christmas Story" when he gets that outfit from his aunt or grandma or whatever and his mom makes him put it on!

Drew's "feast" consisted of apples and dinner rolls. She is the pickiest eater!

Mason was all about potatoes and gravy!

Uncle Dan, Carmen's husband, carved the turkey. They were such great hosts. I'm not sure I would open my house to 21 people to eat and spend the night!

Its always fun to have a couple of days being immersed in family, but I think it is just as fun to come home with my little family and get back to normal. I am a homebody and its always in the back of mind that my own bed is waiting for me!