Turkey and more turkey...and a little bit of basketball

If you belong to my family—extended or immediate—your holidays are chaotic. There are too many people who live too far from one another to just have one day of celebrations. For Thanksgiving, I eat a full turkey dinner a minimum of twice, sometimes more.

Christmas is far busier. I average four Christmas celebrations/dinners, not including work parties and friend gatherings.

This week, Thanksgiving began on Thursday at our house. It was David's mom's turn for Turkey Day (we rotate Thanksgiving and Christmas between our families), so she and Chuck swung by around 5 PM for the full spread. David and I together prepared (hold on to your bursting belts): turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, noodles (Amish style), baked beans, rolls, green bean casserole, corn casserole and two kinds of pumpkin pies. Holy moley!

We obviously had a ton of food (can you say carb fest?), but we've decided it's more fun to have both families' favorite side dishes. I can't live without the green beans and corn casserole; David's family requires noodles and baked beans.

For what seemed like days of preparation (and it was... wait until you read my post about the last-minute REMODELING we did in the last days prior to Thanksgiving), it was all over in an hour or so and we spent the remainder of the day hanging around on our couches like satisfied fat cats. Meow.

On Friday I took the opportunity to dash out early to the local stores for some Black Friday low-key craziness while David lazed away the morning with Noah. In Mount Vernon, you generally don't find the true madness (and subsequent useless tragedies) of more suburban areas, so I feel safe (and smart!) taking advantage of those wallet-friendly door busters.

That afternoon Noah and I headed north to my folks' house for T2 (David had to stay in MV because he was on call for work that weekend). My son blessed me by sleeping and/or not fussing the entire way there. Hallelujah!

We arrived just in time to go to my brother Jeff's high school girls basketball game. He's been coaching forever, and I like to make it to at least one game a year. We had quite the cheering section this time; there were 12 or 13 of us there to root on the Lady Lakers. It must have worked, they won by my more than 20 points, notching the first win of the season for Coach Compan.

It was my niece McCamey's first game cheering on her dad, too, and doesn't she look darling in her pink velour outfit Auntie Tif bought her?



And later, after a poo-related incident all parents are familiar with, she rocked out a fuzzy pink sleeper ditty that I couldn't get enough of. Here she is with my mom, who is still over the moon about having a granddaughter...finally!


Though it's hard to see his face, Coach Compan was in control of the game the whole time.


And here's our gang. I learned some interesting strategies for confining 17-month-olds to small spaces that night. Tricky stuff.


I love this picture of Noah hanging out between my dad (left) and my BIL, Chris (right). Doesn't he look like a slouchy teenager?


Saturday & Sunday, Noah and I took advantage of lots of quality time with the fam. The boys were raucous and goofy, and Noah was thrilled to be big enough to be part of it.

After all that, I still have substantial leftovers in the fridge, and a substantial growth in my waistband to get rid of before the Christmas cookies start rolling out. Better get started since it'll be here in just 3.5 weeks!

P.S. A shout out to my sister... I haven't laughed as hard as I did attempting to give her the "jaw claw" in my mom's kitchen—a little something we (mostly she) used to do to torture each other as kids. I was crying from acting so silly. What a release.