“Thanksgiving is, after all, a word of action.”
– W. J. Cameron

My immediate family has always been rather insular, we live far away from my extended family and haven’t always had the best relationship with them anyway.  So holidays have mostly been just us and I’ve always liked them that way: smaller, inundated with our own bizarre traditions (I think I’ll discuss some of our more quirky holiday habits at length later), and just plain cozy. 

And then I married the youngest of five children (three others of whom are married with kids of their own) whose parents live nearby and who like to get everyone together on holidays. 

So yesterday when we had our first faux-Thanksgiving (another one with godfamily may or may not be forthcoming…they haven’t celebrated a holiday on its designated day for some years now, thanks to Drill’s work schedule.  Who knows?  Maybe we’ll just eat pie and go to a movie!) because Darling and Atticus are going out of town this week, it was quite the event!  Four kids, two babies, eight adults, three ovens, two dozen rolls (not enough!), four pounds of yams (barely enough), one turkey, approximately four million toys all over the kitchen floor, and one minor blizzard.

Absolute madness!  In a fun way.  I met J.’s oldest brother and sister-in-law for the second time (first time was at the wedding) and tricked their baby into liking me.  My brother-in-law misunderstood instructions and dumped a bunch of boiled potatoes onto the counter instead of mashing them up and then took a picture of his baby’s new trick of grabbing onto things (I taught him!).  Unfortunately, baby was grabbing onto my necklace and the camera was perfectly angled down my shirt.  The kids had already eaten a bunch of the rolls before dinner even started and then spent a good chunk of the time crawling around under the table as we adults tucked into turkey.  Afterwards they disappeared upstairs for a while only to return shrieking and pasting post-it notes over everything and everyone in reach and one of the boys punched the other in the face.

Aunt C. is becoming acclimated.