Thanksgiving

Here is our "small" Thanksgiving: only 10 people together. Top to bottom is Jakey, Evan, Sophie, Josh, Cheyenne, Sam, Dave, Steph, Me and Eric. The rest of my family was in Tennessee (Mom and Pop; my Sara; Randi, Dave and their three boys), Colorado (Amy, Aaron, their two boys; my Johnathan; Steph's Chad; Ryan), Arizona (Mike, Tina, their two; Mandi and Tim and their little guy), California (Phil and Alex and their two), and of course, Panama (Jeff). Our day here in Maryland was great-quiet, full of good food, good conversation, plenty of playing together, washing of dishes and web-cam conversations with the other pockets of family scattered about. There were few leftovers, so I made a big batch of mashies yesterday to eat with my turkey sandwiches. Tomorrow comes the soup. Can't wait. It will bubble in the crock pot while we're at church and be so very yummy to come home to.

Friday was a photo day. I had two shoots: Corinne's family reunion-so much fun-and a senior photo shoot for a boy in my seminary class. They both went well. It's fun to take pictures of people I really like. Last night, on a whim, some friends and I went to see August Rush. It was sweetly romantic enough to pull me in and make me cry, but if you don't make it to the theater, don't worry about it.

Today, the family begins to come back together. Johnathan made it through Atlanta Airport (I was worried all day) and got home a few minutes ago. Evan is back from his extended cousin sleepover at Steph's. Sara gets back tonight or tomorrow morning. It will be sooo good to have everyone back together. For now, we are firmly in the testosterone zone as the boys revel in football games and working on cars. I was going to get all kinds of things done today, but instead I went to PA with a dear friend to visit a yarn shop in East Berlin. Such pretty country up there.


After a lovely morning catching up with Elizabeth and a good ole' chicken-fried, country lunch at Cracker Barrel outside of York, I came home and crashed. The cold I've been pretending not to have all week because it just wasn't a good week to be sick has finally caught up with me. I'm losing my voice (hopefully I'll be able to croak out the song for choir tomorrow since I talked all my kids into joining the choir with me), and just feeling generally whipped. I do have to get some laundry done, though. So I'm trying to decide what movie to watch while I fold. Hmmm.

I've decided to add a new feature for the holidays: Every day I get about 4 pounds of catalogs in the mail. Every day there is a really weird one that I've NEVER heard of, let alone ordered from. Today's winner is Mrs. Prindable's. It is some sort of gourmet food catalog. I love that name. I hope I've helped someone with their holiday shopping.