Thanksgiving 2024

I meant to take a lot of photos at Thanksgiving dinner--mostly to just have more pictures of my childhood home, but I got so busy visiting and eating such good food that I forgot all about getting my camera out until everything was mostly cleaned up and over!

Ah well. 

Anyway, we went to my mom's this year. So many of my older siblings have married kids and grandkids of their own now that most of them end up hosting their own families for Thanksgiving. So, Thanksgiving at my mom's feels much smaller even than one of her monthly Sunday dinners!

Of course "much smaller" is still big by most standards I suppose. There were 24 of us there this year. But it did feel like a relatively small crowd. Particularly since my family made up nearly half of the attendees. We had all of us, except for Goldie of course. My mom. Rob and Amber with their two younger kids. Rob's son Joey and his wife Cyenna with their baby boy. And Shannon and Jason with their youngest three.

(And truly so much good food and so many wonderful pies! I was sad to not have taken enough leftovers to last me every meal for a week! Luckily Mike insisted Daisy triple his mom's crescent roll recipe, so we did have quite a few rolls leftover!)

I did get a few measly photos at the end:

Cousins playing games in the pit. (There is a little sunken area at the far end of my parents' kitchen--just past the table that seats 13. It has built in couches, a woodstove, and the record player that we used for Christmas music, etc. all my growing up. We always called this area "the conversation pit" or just "the pit" for short. You can even see a glimpse of some of the World Books and the familiar Family-Night board--each of us painted on it with squares overlaying us, waiting for assignments to be put on them.)

And a bit more.

Abe and cousin Joey.

My sister Shannon and my brother Rob.

We stopped by Mike's parents' after and visited for a bit. His siblings had already all left, but it was nice to see his parents. Then we drove back to Logan in the dark with Christmas music playing and some of us even singing a few of them out loud together for a spell. 

At home we put the little kids to bed and watched a movie with all the older kids. (So nice having Abe and Daisy home!)