And How Was Your Thanksgiving?

We had a great Thanksgiving dinner at Angela's and Danny's and got to meet some new folks and see some others we hadn't seen for years. And we missed a few of our regulars, Karen, Richard, and Daniel, who felt they needed to stick a bit closer to Seton Hospital than the rest of us who traveled north. People were coming and going on their own schedules, just like the old days. I drove up in the rain and by the time I got to Arlington it was in the mid 30's. Of course, that would never keep me from a turkey dinner. I've a few more pictures than usual in this post and more still that I'll make available shortly. I chose these because they'll fit in my brief but trenchant narrative.

Once I broke out my camera, I felt the thing to do was stir up trouble so I could document it all. The best place to do that is in the kitchen where everyone is hard at work preparing my dinner. . . okay, "our" dinner. Here, I'm trying to convince Mary to take credit for the spinach salad Tracy just put together. She was pleasant about it, but having none of my shenanigans.

This may be more work than I'd expected. I was still hanging in the neighborhood when Tracy returned and added the fruits of her labor to the buffet.

Tracy and Matt traveled the farthest (from the UK) to brighten our day and the picture above shows them with Tracy's granddad, who dropped in to see that everybody was behaving themselves. The three of them are sandwiched between our new friends (and Matt's parents), John and Sarah. They came from the Turks and Caicos islands to see what kind of people Matt and Tracy were hanging out with. It was a great visit and we thoroughly enjoyed meeting them.

Now, several of the attendees chose to run the somewhat damp 2K Turkey Trot over in Fort Worth the day before. And I found the headgear some of the entrants chose to keep their ears warm very disturbing when I saw photographs of them on Facebook.

Danny really bonded with his fowl hat apparently and seemed to be talking to it in his corner of the kitchen while he prepared his portion of our feast. Notice the interest Danny's friend exhibits when he becomes aware of the pleasant smells wafting through the kitchen.

Unfortunately, that didn't last long at all. He was clearly terrified when he tumbled to the unspeakable things Danny was doing to the bird on the counter. LOOK AT THE POOR HAT'S EYES! I couldn't take it any more and had to go find someplace to sit down.

Shortly thereafter emotions calmed and peace returned when the monkey bread joined the rest of "the fixin's" on the buffet. It was all every bit as good as it looked. . . note the pies on the sideboard: Pecan, Cherry, Pumpkin, Buttermilk and, of course, Chocolate (hiding in the fridge, no doubt).

I heard several laments during the course of the afternoon about the kids growing up, we being short of toddlers at the moment. Well, we can't have it all our own way, I suppose. And these are good kids after all. They may enjoy a good card game, but keep their greenbacks out of sight lest they scandalize any transients who might wander through the family room. (Did you notice Blake's chapeau? He's very close to Danny, his grandfather, and seems possibly to have inherited his attraction to avian head wear. We don't usually bring it up, not wanting to embarrass him.)

They all love my pictures, this crew, and decided after I'd already stowed my camera for the drive back to Austin that this was an excellent time for some group shots. But that's okay. This is one of the better ones; at least nobody's curled up on the floor asleep. It was another truly grand Thanksgiving.