The Terrible Catsafterme

Tonight we celebrated Thanksgiving in grand style at my place. Now that everyone is gone and everything is cleaned up, I miss wandering into the kitchen and snacking on pieces of cold turkey and a forkful of one of the nearly ten pies we had on hand. I was talked into hosting this event because my dwelling was the most likely candidate to fit everyone into one area to eat. Jim and Jan usually host but they were unavailable this year.

Fortunately, I did not have to do any of the cooking – but I did put in my time getting the house clean and prepared. We filled the basement with tables courtesy Mom and Bob and it was a perfect fit to seat the 30 people that we had. Bev prepared the turkey to perfection and everyone else contributed a side dish. We ran out of gravy and meatballs - (I foolishly waited to grab a meatball during my second of three helpings – but alas, they were gone) but other than that there was plenty to spare. And we could have built a small fort out of pies.

Roll call! In attendance were Grandpa Murphy, Diana, Tom, Cathy, Lori, Shane, Brandon, Abby, Elise, Debby, Mike, Brad (not me; another one – Mike’s little boy), Mom, Bob C, Me, Ashleigh, Denise, Aaron, Adam, Bryan, Bev, Ed, Chris, Sarah, Darlene, Bob R, Brittney, Doug, Jacob, and Zac. I think that’s everyone – I listed them in order of families by status: age before beauty.

It was great to see Chris and Sarah. Since they are now living in Columbus, I don’t get to see them that often. Chris brought me a peace-pipe offering of his entire collection of Pink Floyd CD’s for me to borrow. I will not do anything illegal with them. That would be illegal.

Of course, seeing Lori’s family is always a treat. She and Shane travelled from Virginia for the holiday. Her girls are always adorable. This year Abby came dressed as an indian brave. They immediately found Ashleigh’s keyboard with the singalong microphone and regaled us with their improvised vocal selections.

When the obligatory football game wasn’t on, Diana took us through a slideshow DVD of photos past and present of the Heywood family. This is the family of my Grandpa’s Mother.

Chris, Sarah, Debby, and I hung out in my spare room for a bit while Chris perused my CD collection to see if he could find something to withdraw. The pressure was too great though and he went home empty-handed. Little Brad (not me) made his entrance looking for Debby and then closed and locked the door. We were trapped in there for hours and we had to survive by eating our own fingernails.

Overall, it was a great night. Didn’t have to cook. Didn’t have to clean-up. Everyone took care of that for me, while I held Adam and took my traditional weekly photos of him. Oh, and Tiny was a perfect young lady for her first Thanksgiving fiesta. While Baby was hiding from the crowd, Tiny worked it. I saw her involved in many conversations throughout the night. Bring on the turkey sandwiches!

More on Thanksgiving break here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 23rd, 2006 at 11:04 pm and is filed under Family Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.