Thanksgiving Weekend 2006

Hello all. Aside from being sick, Thanksgiving weekend was great. We had a smaller gathering this year, but we did do a speaker phone toast with the McNaughts. It was a little tough, I think because John had a half duplex speaker phone.

We had two special guests that came a long way for their first American Thanksgiving. Paul's Mom, Margaret, and his mate Brendan. They were both at the wedding last year, and it was nice to have them back.










Rachel woke me up around 7:30 or so. It was rough as I was up late baking and making stuffing the night before. Jake was up and helping, too. He even pulled the nasty bits out of the bird for us. Rachel just can't, and I gag.

Then it was a lot of cooking. And some last minute cleaning. I know I was running on adrenalin from being sick and also tired, but it honestly seemed easier this year. I think the key to our success was Rachel's idea to create a comprehensive To Do List and Menu in Excel. Whenever we found ourselves wondering what to do next, we just went to the list.

Here's me in the kitchen.
That was putting the yams in the mixer for the casserole. The chopped potatoes were on the fire next. The really tricky part was timing everything with one oven. But we managed - the bird came out, the casserole and asparagus au gratin went in, Dolores made the string beans (yum!) in a wok on the stove top while I pulled the ham in off the rotisserie and we finished up with the rolls.

It seems like only yesterday, but it's got to be ten years ago. Ayway, at one of my first Thanksgivings at the McNaughts's house, Adrianne made place setting name tags for everyone. She found these great big leaves, painted them gold, and then wrote a name on each. It was a nice touch. And ever since then, Rachel's tried to do something like it. This year, she got out her stamp pad kit and soome glitter and glue and tibbon and I don't know what all, I was upstairs cooking. But they came out great. Here's an example...


And here's some pictures from around the table.










































Everyone stayed over, and Brendan and Lauren and Paul stayed over on Friday Night as well. It was a nice long relaxing weekend.

Margaret taught Lauren, Rachel, and Dolores some new stitches. And they had something of an English afternoon tea.














We played pool (Brendan clobbered me) and darts (at darts, too).












Clear skies and weird fog (could it be London fog they crammed in to overhead storage?)...


The new fridge is amazing. Everything fit. Come to think of it - that was a big part of what made cooking easier this year.



Michael made sandwiches...


Football Hooligans...











And Friday night, we played poker (I clobbered Brendan).










That's my poker face. And Rachel isn't buying it.

Not sure how to end a post like this. I'm hoping next year we'll have a bigger group again. And maybe even some representation from my side of the family.

Anyway - here's the sunset we got on Thanksgiving.


One for the books.