Thanksgiving Events

Everything turned out great this year for Thanksgiving. Family started trickling into town on Tuesday and we postponed the actual Thanksgiving dinner until Friday because my niece was not able to get here until then. I had the whole week off, so I was able to watch the kids while DW made preparations and cleaned the house. I pitched in on the cleaning where I felt I could do a decent job and not mess up her system. Everything got done, and I was once again impressed by DW's work ethic. She is one of the hardest working women I know. I sometimes have to force her to take time for herself because she's so focused on taking care of her family. She even forgets to eat sometimes, which especially drives me nuts when she's pregnant. She just loves taking care of her home and family. She was asked several times this weekend how she does it all. We were talking about it after everyone left, and she related to me that maybe everyone is getting the impression that it all comes easy to her. She doesn't want that. She wants people to know its just as hard for her as it would be for anyone.

My FIL and I knocked out some projects in my shop that went a long way towards getting it organized. For the last 9 months my shop has been a gigantic mess that I've never had time to organize. On his last visit he got bored and organized and cleaned the whole thing in one afternoon. This time around he had thought of a few things we could do to make it even better, and donated the raw materials and labor. He is a pack rat of sorts (as is his daughter) and he's got spare "everything" lying around. We built a lumber storage rack out of metal purline, used some wire run through the metal purline on the shop wall to make a space to store PVC pipe, and built a big workbench out of scrap lumber. The shop looks great.

The ducks were cooked up on Friday afternoon, and other than having too much food (typical for anyone's Thanksgiving), everything was great. We didn't eat much duck. I think either people were afraid to try it, or just wanted ham more. We polished off one duck, but there are 3 more sitting back in our freezer. I liked it and look forward to eating some over the next few weeks.

We kicked back after dinner and watched A&M devastate Texas, which just rounded out a great holiday. After everyone left on Saturday we broke out the Christmas decorations, and despite near freezing temperatures and sleet, I put up the outside lights. Putting up Christmas lights is one of my favortie parts of the holiday season. I didn't go overboard this year, but am contemplating putting up a few more lights before Christmas gets here.

All and all it was a great Turkey Day. Now on to Christmas!