Thanksgiving 2011

Well, I guess it's time to document Thanksgiving 2011.  Thanksgiving Day found Dick and I doing some deep cleaning and organizing around here.  Around 5 PM we went to Anthony and Lori's for an amazing feast of mashed potatoes, candied yams, stuffing, roast beef, turkey, ox tail, corn, apple crisp, and ice cream.  And I didn't do any of the cooking!  

Dick had to work on Friday.  I prepared for feast number two.  Actually, it was made easy by having some of Lori's leftovers.  Her candied yams became part of my yam pudding.  Her corn became part of my baked corn.  Some of her turkey and her friend Tina's stuffing also were used.  

Dick got home from work around 6,  Ray and Thyda with Destiny, as well as their dog Leo, arrived around 6:30, and Anthony, Lori, and Austin came soon after that.   Thyda had brought all the ingredients for her famous mac and cheese, so we quickly threw that together and baked it.  By the time we finally sat down we were all so hungry, and the food seemed tastier than ever before. 

 

Austin meets Leo.

Destiny brought her violin along.  I didn't realize that Lori used to play violin!  I also didn't realize that Anthony actually knows how to play a song on it.  I have that video down at the end of this post. 

Random pictures from the evening.

We were so eager to play a real Scrabble game, since we've all been getting so much practice via Words with Friends on our phones.  But we discovered we're spoiled now.  It seemed like such a pain to try to see the board, to wait on each other to take turns, to calculate our own scores!  Sad indeed!

So after one game of Scrabble we ended up with our very favorite game of Dictionary - our homemade version of Balderdash.  As always, the game elicited some good belly laughs.

Saturday morning we lazed around, and I made pancakes and sausage for everyone. Destiny started the Growums herb garden I had bought from her school's fund raiser.

 

I love Thyda.  She's like a big sister to Destiny - always doing things that interest her.  

 

Eventually the house got quiet.  Dick packed up and left for the hunting cabin.  Lori and Austin went on to other things, and Ray and Thyda packed up to go back to her parents in Lancaster for one more night before returning to Virginia Beach.    Destiny stayed, and I'll write about our activities on the next post. 

Here are two of the videos I took over the weekend.  The first is the one of Anthony playing a song on the violin.  The second is just Ray being Ray.  Our family has a lot of comedians, but Ray tops them all.