I love Thanksgiving. It's always a special time of year. We take turns each year going with mine of Cory's family. This year it was my turn to have Thanksgiving with my family. That usually just means the Utah family. It's rather hard to get everyone or anyone from out of state. And sometimes hard to even get all the Utah family.
This year was no exception, except Shauna decided to drive up from Az. with her kids. We haven't seen her for a while, so this was exciting.
We started a new tradition (last year) of getting together the day before Thanksgiving to make pies. Coconut cream pies were the hit of the party last year, so this year we made more, along with apple and pumpkin pies. Shauna showed up just in time to help with some finishing touches.
Paul and Chantra's family arrived early Thursday morning.
We all gathered at Susie's house on Thanksgiving day, which is the only place big enough for a large family like ours. Susie put a lot of work into making our day nice by setting up tables set nicely with place settings and even names to go with the place settings. She had nice dishes and everything. We all brought our share of food and pies. Before we started eating, Paul's 2 ever-so-talented girls Kailee and Sunnie graced us with a beautiful violin/piano duet. Then Paul read to us the speech George Washington gave when he made Thanksgiving an official holiday.
Then Mom had us check our place settings for 5 kernals of popcorn. This was to remind us of the starving pilgrims who received a ration of 5 kernals of corn a day to sustain them for the first little while. It was very touching.
Then it was time to dig in and enjoy the food, along with the company of family and friends. We had the honor of having the missionaries join us, a long with a family friend of Susie's who had no family or a place to go for Thanksgiving.
After stuffing ourselves silly, it was time to have fun. We can't have a get together without the games. We had the most fun playing Pass the Sign which went on for well over an hour. We had some great laughs at everyone's expense.
It couldn't have been a better day. There is nothing so wonderful as being with family and the best family in the world, at that. We are richly blessed to have such a large family. We had a great time with the 2 sets of Elders who graced us with their presence. It was a Thanksgiving never to be forgotten. I am so grateful for the wonderful gift of family.
