Giving Thanks

I know it's been a while, but believe me when I say that November has been a BUSY month.  First of all, my mom (Barb) moved in with us!  She has lived too far away for too long and, since we have the extra space, we decided to move her on in with us.  We hope to get her a place of her own one day, but this arrangement is working out great for now.  Her domain is the basement (don't worry, it's nice down there) and we live upstairs.  Of course, we do hang out, but I think it's good to have our space too.

Secondly, I participated in my very first craft fair.  I will share pictures later.  Let's just say I was very nervous, but things went well.

Third, we hosted Thanksgiving for the first time ever.  We had 8 people over for dinner (plus the three of us), and 6 of those folks spent the weekend with us.  Our overnight guests included my MIL, FIL, sis and bro in law, granny in law, and cousin in law.  I was very excited to have our friends Lynne and John join us for dinner (their families live in Michigan and what's Thanksgiving without an awkward family gathering?).  I thought I would be stressed to the max, but I kept my cool for the most part, mostly because this woman helped me cook and keep the house somewhat clean.

I wish I would have taken pictures of all the food, but alas, I'm still a novice at this blogging thing.  We had squash casserole, sour cream and onion mac and cheese, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, dressing (I believe you call it stuffing up north), giblet gravy, rolls, sweet potato souffle, cranberry sauce, sauteed green beans, pumpkin cheesecake, gooey pumpkin butter cake, chocolate covered peanuts, and peanut butter pie. Our turkey looked kind of like this, except not quite so much bacon.  For my first turkey, I think I did pretty well.  It seemed to be a hit.

Here's a pic of the dining setup.  I pulled our dining room table and a folding table into our long living room so we could all eat at one long table.  As Claire from Modern Family said, "If it was good enough for The Last Supper, it's good enough for us."

Here's a pic of my place setting, complete with dollar store pinecones (12 for $1) as place card holders, pumpkins, leaves from the driveway, and a borrowed tablecloth from Lynne.  You can see remnants of casseroles and sour cream mac and cheese on my plate, which I savored with some sweet tea and red wine.

Here's a picture of my beautiful sis-in-law, Whitney, mid-mouthful.  Notice Davison's sweet granny at the head of the table.  While she was visiting, Whitney put Granny's clothes in the guest closet, which is the same closet my husband uses since I booted him out of the one in our master bedroom.  Granny's memory ain't what it used to be, particularly because memory loss is a side effect of her medications and on Day 2 she came out of her room wearing one of my husband's polo shirts.  She is so adorable.  She hides money when she leaves because she doesn't want anyone paying for her food.

Of course, no Davison household event is complete without a little Rock Band.

 Zeph, my bro-in-law, was tearing up the vocals, so I got a few close up shots so you could feel the emotion.

For most of the weekend, the boys worked on a house project that I can't wait to show you, but it's not quite finished.  I will give you a hint.

And I'll leave you with a picture of my fall mantel, because I realized today that I had not shared it since I completed it.

I'm so grateful to have such wonderful people to share my life and my home.