Thanksgiving

Well, I hope you have had a wonderful Thanksgiving and I hope you enjoy mine. We had some great friends come visit from Pennsylvania. They stayed over Thursday to Sunday night. One those family's it is hard NOT to get along with.

Thanksgiving was great! Additionally we had the Flynns and my mom's mother. Food, laughter talk, games, speeches, food, prayer, food, shooting, desert and much more. Enjoy.

Love in Christ,
Michael

Well the time for thanksgiving preparation has finally come. As usuall, we started the day before and cook into the wee hours of the Thanksgiving morning. Here Mom makes the wonderful jelly cookie things.

After cooking for 4 hours or so (i.e. about 12:00-12:30, the late hour gets the best of us. Here Melissa and I burst into an impromptu duet)

Snitching ... an holiday tradition ;-)

Melissa preparing one of many different desserts

Melanie mixes our stuffing which we made 10 TIMES!!!! (We will eat left over for a week I suppose)

The turkey is done

Thanksgiving day ... our guests begin to arrive.

The table turned out so nice that everyone just HAD to get picture of it.

Art

Pa reads the George Washington speech which declared Thanksgiving to be a national holiday.

The twins get their own little table with Marscel

My shutter bug sista'

Random feasting shot

Art

Enjoying the meal.

Here I am hard at work bringing you the pictures you count on.

Singing the pilgrim song "Old 100" (Psalm 100)

Ma and Grandma enjoy desert.

I little more then he could handle I think.

Afterwards we had our anual "turkey hunt"

Drawing a bead

Melanie kills her turkey.

Self portrait of me and one of my favorite little girls in 'de world.

Later I found my sister got the same shot.

One fun activity was the game "Pin the feather on Samoset". If you missed and got Gabby or Roy Rodgers ... you lost right off.

Way to go grandma!

Apparently he was amazed at his results.

Even Kermit joined in the fun.

Later one, we played music ... songs, hymns, folk tunes etc.

Marscel gets a chance to join in

A humourous incedant occured while we were playing the music. The smaller ones were playing around under the table. Somehow the leg fell under the table crashed down. With 5 or six cameras, this was probably the best publicized event of the evening.

Friday, the girls went to Blithewald a local mansion where Melissa finds here true love.

The Queen of Sheba?

Card games

... and the rest of her ladies and lords in waiting. Here we set up for the movie ...

A Christmas Carol!!! Along time family favorite which I can WHITHOUT reservation (aside from some moments of corniness) reccomend if you need a laugh.

While I watched the movie, I worked on my latest work; a series on the mythical land of Enya which exists in my mind alone.

Complete

During the movie Mathew demonstrates his talent with card stacking ... Wow!!

Friday morning us boys braved the 20F weather to engage in an airsoft battle.

Later Friday morning us boys went to the shooting range. It was so fun.

The boys fire away

Don't mess with my dad .... (please note, all due safety precautions were taken in the productio of this photo)

Matthew gets to shoot a handgun for the first time in his whole 15 years. WAY TO GO BRO!!

Daniel ejects a cartridge from his firearm ... notice right above his fingers on HIS left hand, you can actually see the shell coming out.

Saturday afternoon our friend Cathy Snyder from New Hampshire arrived. My mom hosted a jewelry show of sorts or her. She is has been a friend of ours for OVER 20 YEARS

Every piece is laid out with precision (oh for some $$$)

Customers (our friends) were delighted by their purchases.

Meanwhile, support crew was hard at work in the kitchen preparing Thai Chicken Wanton Wrap thingamajigs.

... all done. According to Melissa, we made over 100 of these. They all vanished in about 3/4's an hour's time