Our first Thanksgiving in the new house

Well, Thanksgiving is over and we have worked hard the last week getting the house ready for Thanksgiving dinner and the 16 people we had at the house for dinner. All went well I think - the pictures I have included in the blog today are of the two table settings. The one above was the "kids" table and the one below was the "main" table. I don't know if you can tell or not but we had folding chairs and tables we borrowed from school. Wasn't exactly the most elegant dining room set, but it served it's purpose and I think that everyone had a good time - which is the most important thing.

There were no real disaster's in the food preparation - even though the marshmallows did catch on fire on the candied yams - but that is a family tradition in my house - the first batch of marshmallows ALWAYS catch on fire - thank goodness for big packs of those white fluffy things.

We have packed all of Thanksgiving and fall away and the house is now decorated for Christmas. Three trees are up and decorated - the "formal" one in what will be the dining room - it's the one that can be seen from the front of the house - then the one in the family room - which is the one Dan and I can see - it can also be seen from the front of the house IF the front door is open and can be seen from the canal also - and finally, the one in our bedroom (which is really a small table top tree, but it's still a tree that had to be decorated). We have also put up lit garland on the patio, which can be seen from the canal also - there was no way to put lights up in the front of the house - plus we had gotten rid of most of our decorations when we went "full-time". Thanks goodness we saved some stuff. Anyway, it is nice to know that everything is now decorated.

A cousin of Dan's came up from Miami yesterday and spent the afternoon with us. It was nice to see Tom and his new wife. We had a nice visit and went out to lunch at the Tower View - a sandwich was nice after all the richness of Thanksgiving food.

Today I unpacked some crates that we had in the garage and found some of the clothes that I thought was missing. Some of my seasonal things that I used to wear when I taught school before - Christmas vests and shirts - too bad I didn't find them before Thanksgiving since there were some fall shirts in the crate also. Anyway, I got everything washed today and put away - so now I 'll have the Christmas stuff to wear the last couple of weeks of school before our next break. I guess I'm as ready as I'm going to be to go back to work tomorrow. Wish I didn't have to, but it's only for three weeks before we have Christmas break. Then, I go back for two weeks and then we have the cruise. I keep telling myself I can do this - but, I sure will be glad when this school year is over and done with! I'll have to look at some other way to make some money - maybe I'll look into teaching at the private Christian school here in town. At least, that's a thought.

Well, I'm going to sign off for this week. I hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving and that you are all ready for Christmas. Take care and --------------------

I'll talk to you on Sunday!