"Thanks For The Memory"

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  It was so good to have our family together for a lovely, happy, well-stuffed (and not just the bird!), holiday meal.  We didn't exactly have a crowd, there were just the five of us (Mikey, Ratchlet, T.A., M-t-G, and me) for dinner and later we were joined by T.A.'s mom and her beau. Oh, plus Dora (the dog).  That's all the family we have close by.  Little Sis and her kids gathered (I gather) in Mesa for their own Thanksgiving traditions.  I have a multitude of cousins and the Big Guy has six siblings and their multitude of offspring and cousins, but they are all scattered across the country.  It's too bad in some ways, I have  always loved entertaining a crowd.  I would love having more family at our family celebrations, especially my sister, but it seems unlikely that there will ever be a large gathering of family as we used to have. Try as I might, I haven't been able to convince anyone to come and join us here in Austin.  Still, my favorite part of the family was here!

The Big Guy is our official chef and he put together our delicious traditional dinner (with last minute help from Ratchlet and T.A.)  My job is decorating, planning, arbitration (mostly unneeded this year!), troubleshooting, presentation and ultimate decision-maker.  All that means is that mostly I have very little to do with the preparation of the actual meal!  (Hey, in our family we go with our strengths!  It's safer that way!)

Because things always take longer than we plan for, there's a lot going on at the last minute and things get a little chaotic.  At that point there isn't a lot for M-t-G to do, but this year I had a brilliant idea.  I gave her my camera and made her the official event photographer!  I figured she would enjoy having a "job" with real substance and we would get at least a few photos to record the day.  She did a pretty great job!  I told her to just take pictures of the people, the decorations, and whatever else caught her eye.  Here are some of her best efforts

And our P-P-P-Pies! 

Best Pecan Pie Evah!!



Pumpkin - with the cutest little leaves!






Peach
Mikey's first fruit pie effort --  Wonderful!









And a few more photos that didn't turn out quite as well.  She started to play around with the settings.  :)

We were caught nibbling before dinner!



A little canoodling on the side!



Uhhhhhh.....beats me!



There were many more -- some good, some more "artsy", but all in all she did a great job, especially for a 10 year old.

Portrait of our budding photographer



So M-t-G, "Thanks for the Memory"! Great Job! 

And here is one last one of all of us.  We all look a little bit overstuffed, understandably because it was Thanksgiving after all!  Nevertheless, we had a great day!  I hope that your's was the best ever!



[I tried to fix the scary "pet eye" thing that made Dora look possessed. 
But this "repair" is just as scary!  She's a nice little dog, really!
 As long as you don't enlarge it, it's not too bad, but don't make it bigger, okay??
Don't say I didn't warn you!]