Thanksgiving Gathering/Christmas Mess/Christmas Favorites/Christmas Fun All Make For Many Blessings

We celebrated Thanksgiving at Ray's sister's home. Susie once again went way above and beyond the call of duty! We arrived at Susie's at noon and this is what greeted us!

This was Susie's APPETIZER table:




And while we were all enjoying eating the wide variety of appetizers that Susie and her daughters (Jackie, Jill, and Erika) had prepared for us...

(Left to right: Our daughter-in-law Lori, our son Erik, our granddaughter Mia, and our oldest son Brian, our niece Erin is in the background.)

...and then spending time playing and relaxing in between courses...

Left to right: Ann (my brother Tom's ex-wife), Ellie (our youngest daughter), Scott (Jackie's boyfriend), Jackie (Susie's oldest daughter), Donald (Ray's brother), and Mikael (Susie's youngest).

(I think you know these three!)

...Susie was busy in the kitchen cooking a turkey dinner with all the trimmings!



Here's Mia modeling her little brown Thanksgiving dress:




Mia and I inspecting some beach glass that Donald found:



Here's my guy:


This is Susie's youngest daughter Erika (our youngest daughter Ellie is behind her):



This is the family dog Jada:



Here's Susie's son-in-law Rudy yelling at the TV:



And here's Rudy being Rudy!
(You can barely see poor Jackie being squished underneath him!)

Left to right: Ellie, Scott, Jackie, Rudy, and Donald
(Donald was on his best behavior and so of course then Rudy had to take up his slack and start in! If it's not one acting up it's the other!)

Here's Erin (Ann's daughter), sitting and enjoying a peaceful moment, minding her own business...



...and here comes Rudy making the rounds!


Here Brian and Scott are trying to catch a nap...



...but there's no chance of that with Rudy around!


Here's Jill's new tattoo (it says "I love my FarFar" in Swedish, FarFar is what the kids all called Ray's Dad, inside the cloud are red hearts and blue teardrops):


We all got too busy having fun and eating lots more and no one thought to take pictures of the main course and the gigantic dessert table. Suffice it to say we were stuffed!
And we had a great time thanks to Susie! It was a very Happy Thanksgiving!

The next day we decorated our tree!

Down from the attic came the boxes and the mess!


Jayden helped for awhile until he grew bored:



These are some of my favorite decorations. I try to put them up near the top and right out front.
These decorations were my grandmother's on my Dad's side and she said that they were in her family since she was a little girl.


I love these tiny Santas:


But I'm wondering why these Santas all have such sad faces?!




Here's a little tiny yarn scarecrow:


And this bell is one of many decorations that were my grandmother's too, it looks silver in this picture but it's actually a very pale blue:



And this is a pin that my grandmother gave to me years ago, she got it from one of the many Catholic charities that she used to donate to.
Sometimes I take it off the tree to wear on my jacket:



Last year we bought a very skinny tree because our living room is so tiny and the big tree we had didn't leave much room for gifts (or furniture, or people!), it really makes decorating so much easier:



We're almost done, we just have a few bare spots up top to decorate:


And now I'm like Jayden, I've grown bored with decorating and here I sit blogging! I better get back to to the tree!