Thanksgiving

I think Thanksgiving is definitely one of my favorite holidays. Our family tradition is to invite many people over for a big late lunch. We try to invite anyone that doesn't have anyplace to go. Since we've always had family that lives far away, we've gotten with friends from church. Back when my husband's mom was alive we would occasionally get with her and his brother's family that lives about an hour away. But now their two children are married with their own families, and they do stuff together.

Anyway, I love having my house all clean and decorated in fall-ness. This year, with L out of work, the lion's share of the work was on his lap (in theory) However, he ended up having interviews and two contract job offers, and all manner of details that needed to be taken care of earlier this week, so we ended up with a bunch of stuff to do on Wednesday and then Thursday morning. Fortunately three of the families that were coming were bringing plenty of the food, so all we were needing to take care of were the zillion homemade rolls, the traditional death by chocolate, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a salad. All 3 of the kids living at home helped a lot, and then number 2 son came over early to help out as well. Number one son's contribution was to pick up the Thanksgiving day paper so whomever wanted to tackle Black Friday could do so.

We weren't sure how many actually were going to come as we had a possibility of close to 40 at the beginning of the week, but one family of four declined, the Indian family that was invited made other plans, and another couple got invited by some family members at the last minute. But we did end up with a couple of singles that came up at the last minute, having a total of 29. But this was not all at once, as three only stayed for lunch and then had to leave, and three more came at about dessert time.

It is always so much fun to figure out how to squeeze in more tables and chairs into our modest sized home. The last couple of years I've been putting a table in the entryway to hold cups and putting a cooler of ice underneath. This seems to keep the flow going better, as we have the sofas and football watchers in the living room, along with a cardtable behind the sofa for a foursome to eat, the study with two cardtables put together for 6 to sit, and then of course the bar filled with the food and the dining table for 10 and kitchen table for 8. Now that the big boys have moved out, there is plenty of room in youngest son's bedroom for the boys to hang out and play video games. This year the college aged and beyond boys (there ended up being 8 aged 20-26) that didn't want to watch football went outside and sat and played guitars and banjos and what not. It was pretty neat. The weather was overcast and 60's so a far cry from the snow we had last Thanksgiving!

Some of us ladies played dominoes with one gal's aged mother after the kitchen was fairly clean. She enjoyed that after having a little nap on younger daughter's bed. People gradually left by about 8 pm so I got all motivated to start a load of the tablecloths and dishcloths. Then I decided to go ahead and take down all the fall stuff so we could get the Christmas decorations out later this weekend. I went to bed feeling pretty successful as the house was all cleaned and tidy.

I didn't pay attention to what all the plans were for Black Friday, but I knew I didn't feel like tackling that mess. With hubby starting a new job Monday, after being out of work for 3.5 months, there really wasn't any extra money to spend. The older boys had a posse of guys spend the night in their apartment and they got up and did all that, but not me. I planned to sleep in and get some stuff done around the house, as L was going to take daughter to work at her mall job at 6 am. and youngest son to swim practice at 8:30 am. Well, about 8 am I got a call from middle son saying he'd taken a couple to the airport and what time did I want to use their car. Oh, yeah, I forgot! A couple from our church offered for us to use their car while they are visiting relatives for a week. (Since my van transmission is out!) And then L reminded me that I was to pick up youngest son at 10 am and daughter at noon at the mall as he was going to do all his paperwork and drug tests at the new contract job. Yikes! So he dropped me off at the boys' apartment to pick up that car and I picked up son and the two of us stopped by Target (of course he was STARVING) and then I dropped him off at home before heading to the mall to pick up daughter. Oh dear, the mall was awful! I managed to pick her up, but it took 20 minutes to get out of that nightmare. I wanted to shout, "I didn't even get anything! Let me through!" but of course nobody cared about that...
So I really didn't get all that much done that I'd planned yesterday. I took the girls to the matinee movie Twilight as a treat. And I got nauseated. I think we sat too close to the front. I get motion sickness for some reason occasionally when I am at the movies. I've had a lot of sinus problems lately, so may be an inner ear issue, too. It was a good movie even though I had to close my eyes when the action was really intense so I wouldn't throw up.
I went to bed early last night and got a good night's sleep.