A Lovely Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving day is quiet for us. My husband's Mom and siblings all live in different states and my parents live in Arizona. I do have siblings here, but we are not close and after years of trying to get them to come for holidays I decided that it was causing me way too much stress.

We've occasionally had friends over for Thanksgiving, sometimes for dinner, sometimes for dessert and cards later. This year, it was "just us" and it was a lovely day.

Our oldest went to play football at 8am and came home with a slightly sprained ankle a few hours later. I spent the day chopping and simmering and cooking while my husband played cards with the kids.

As we neared dinner time, I realized they were still playing their card game when I was ready to set the table. We don't have an eat-in kitchen, we have an open area floor plan in that our main level is "L" shaped and each room is open to the other. The dining area is more formal than a kitchen eat-in area, but not as formal as a dining room. The kitchen and what was the living room (now my sewing room) are off of the dining room.

My sewing room has a nice oak table in the middle to work on and it doubles as an extra dining area when we have company. I put in the extra leaf, added a table cloth and set the table and voila! a nice dining room. The food was laid out on our dining room table and it really felt more festive to be eating at a different table than we usually do. As soon as the cloth went on, Ruthie claimed a seat and sat there until dinner was served. She sat in a 'big chair' (no booster) and quite enjoyed the special meal. After dinner, we quickly did the dishes and then watched movies and talked and just enjoyed the restful day. Dessert was put out at about 7:00 and we sat around the kitchen table for that.

Yesterday evening we had friends over for cards and dessert. Mostly I quilted, though, which was really nice after the previous three very busy days. I hope to finish my table topper today.

It appears as if the nice TV that I got from my grandma has stopped working, so we're a little sad about that. We never thought we would have such a nice one, it's a little disappointing that it lasted such a short time. I'll probably have to move the one in my sewing room back downstairs, which is also a bit disappointing, I've so enjoyed it being there.

So now I'm feeling a little out of it and hope to pop myself back into gear. We seem to be in this cycle where things are falling apart around our ears, hopefully the coming new year will bring some better things!