November 24, 2022-Happy Thanksgiving! and Christmas in Branson

(click for today's pictures)

My alarm clock went off way too early this morning possibly because I had stayed up way too late last night. I was soon out of bed, and I made my way to the camper to put some things in it. I normally wouldn't have minded an early morning trek to the camper, but since Robby had turned it around yesterday and since it was pouring, I was not happy about it.

I was able to stay fairly dry while running out there and back. I had a basket of things to put up, but it didn't take too long. I then had my shower and started waking up the kids. Whitman was already awake, and I think that Campbell was soon down the stairs.

Campbell made her sausage cornbread this morning-that is something that we mostly all enjoy, but we rarely make it. Robby even said taht we should make it more often. Graham made his contribution of corn casserole which is his favorite.

Pretty much as soon as I had those two things in the oven, it was time for the kids to work on their turkeys. It is a tradition that they do this-though some of my boys, specifically Anderson and Graham, don't seem to care as much about it. Basically Whitman did most of the work with some help from Graham. Of course, decorating must be a girl thing because all three of my girls still ejoy doing their turkey.

We had meat, cheese, fruit and crackers on the turkey platters today. But I do have a public service announcement: don't buy fruit from Whole Foods. We had a gift card there so we ran in to buy our Thanksgiving fruit. The raspberries were not good at all with only a few being salvageable, and the blueberries weren't great either. If they weren't free, I would have been really bothered by this. Graham did suggest that next year, we made a turkey solely out of snack foods-I vetoed his idea.

Soon folks started arriving-all of the family was at Thanksgiving. And when I say ALL, I really do mean all: my folks and Jason, Robby's folks, Dana and her kids, and Les and his family. Everyone was in attendance which made my heart happy. It is certainly nice to have all of the family there.

After a family picture, we started opening up the dishes and had ourselves a feast. My kitchen isn't really made for 21 folks, but we survived. There were all kinds of food for us to choose from plus a plethera of desserts. 

It was a great day-I even came in second in a Spoons game with some of the kids and won 2 dollars. Anderson was third and Lily first. Around 3 or 4 people started dividing up leftovers and leaving. When everyone did leave, I emptied the dishwasher while Robby vacuumed.

While Robby was still vacuuming, Whitman headed to the camper. Then the others followed. There were just a few things that left that we had to grab before leaving. We did forget one toothbrush, but I have extras in here so all was well.

The drive was fairly easy. We did have some light rain about the whole way here tonight. That was nothing though compared to the fog that we would occasionally have. 

We arrived in Branson at our campround around 9. Of course the kids were hungry so as soon as Robby had hooked everything up, we started on supper. All of our meals were leftovers-leftover rolls with ham and cheese, leftover pizza, and leftover Chickfila. 

After we cleaned up from supper, it was time to have everyone pj up and head to bed. Right now Robby and I are catching up on youtube videos before my shower.


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