Happy Thanksgiving!

 

I hope y'all had a fabulous Thanksgiving!  I love any excuse to spend time with my family, so mine was wonderful.  I started the morning in the kitchen with my mom finishing up last minute lunch dishes and listening to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade from the other room.  I just love traditions!  Every time we'd hear something coming up that we knew we wanted to see, Mama and I would drop the knife or whatever instrument was in our hands and run into the living room to watch.  I love being in the kitchen with my mom.  She cooks exactly like my grandmother did.  I've learned, and even mastered, a few of our traditional Thanksgiving recipes over the years, but she always amazes me.  I keep saying I'm going to learn her (Grandmother's) dressing (not stuffing!) recipe.  She makes that difficult..."well, you just add a little of this and a little of that and then you taste it and see what it needs."  Got it, Mama.  :/ 

 

Family started arriving around noon and the first to show were my cousins, Nikki and Shaun.  Now, if you know anything about Nikki and me, you know we've grown up the best of friends and anytime the two of us are together something stupid is going to happen.  Good-stupid, bad-stupid, funny-stupid...just something stupid.  Well, yesterday was no exception.  Mama mentioned a little something about a Santa suit she had in one of her closets. Nikki's and my eyes lit up immediately.  We knew what we had to do.

 





 

Dressed within 5 minutes we quickly ran outside to await more of our family and wave at the cars that would pass.  The cars humored us and waved.  Some even honked, which was really exciting for us.  The next people to arrive were Nikki's parents, sister, and cousin.  They looked at us like we were crazy, but also with the, "it's Jessica and Nikki, what do you expect?" look and walked right past us into the house.  At that point we'd had our fun and figured it was time to put the Santa suit away before my niece arrived and we ruined Christmas for her at age two.

 

Pretty soon there were 18 of us all cozy in the house flipping the TV channels between the dog show and football, waiting for lunch to be ready.

 

Lunch was ready around 1, and Mama set it up buffet style in the kitchen.  So we all lined up to fix our plates then took our place around one of the tables.  At 34 years old, I still haven't graduated from the "kids' table," which is fine with me.  I think I was the oldest at that table this year, so my time for movin' up may be coming!

 

After lunch we continued with another tradition of ours...LEAVES!  Every Thanksgiving we pile up the leaves and play in them.  (This tradition was brought on by me, and might be why they're making me stay at the kids' table.)  So Drew got the blower out and made us a big ol' pile and we played in them for about an hour.  I was still pulling leaves from my boots and from down my shirt at bedtime last night!

 

 

I just loved spending the whole afternoon with my family.  I wish I had gotten more pictures of everybody!

 

Last night a few of us went over to my sister's house to watch the dreaded Egg Bowl.  We ate shrimp creole and had adult beverages...it was a good time.  And, although we lost (typical rebs), I will say that watching the game by the fire with a glass of wine was much better than in the stadium with high winds and 20 degree weather like last weekend!

 

 

I'm not sure if my heart can take anymore Egg Bowls, by the way. 

 

 

A rebel win would have made yesterday perfect, but all in all it was pretty great!  I adore my family, so I love, love the holiday season and spending so much time with all of them.  I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, too!

Happy Holidays!

 

 

Jess