Thanksgiving

A couple shots from the family Thanksgiving at Mary and Mark's just can't do it justice, especially because of the random nature of my shooting--hey, where's Mark in the photos? Oh yeah, he was preparing the main attraction, the bird! What about the bird? Oh, we ate it. We were having too much fun to get a group photo.

Everything was wonderful--the beautifully decorated tables, the cornucopia of flowers, the lively company--seven cousins, including two 3-year-olds and two under-ones, three generations. What a luxury to have wine with paté and baguette for starters. The 17-pound turkey fed us all with some meat to spare; we had gravy, stuffing, grape chutney, fresh cranberry sauce, traditional sweet potatoes, special mashed red potatoes, a cheese-and-spinach dish. What am I forgetting? The list of food is for Mom, by the way. After some playing Monster and flying remote-control helicopters, we had our dessert buffet of pumpkin pie, pumpkin bars, and a chocolate-peanut butter pie.

We gathered around the gratitude box Michael made in school and counted our blessings--from not having school to having a roof over our head, from being surrounded by so much family to having our health, from being able to drive to not having crashed on the drive down. Thanksgiving definitely goes down as my favorite holiday of the year.

And an extra thank you to Micki, who did all those dishes, and the Mystery Man doing the drying.

For more photos, click here.