Getting Ready

Well, its time to get ready. We are going to Keji for Thanksgiving. There will be some of my favorite people there this weekend... as many as 18 of us! Because there will be 4 families, each with 4 or 5 in the group... we have decided that group eating will just be toooo stressful to prepare. No one has that much cooking equipment in the sizes you would need to feed a small army so we are planning one potluck supper for Saturday at a cook house somewhere in the park and then Thanksgiving Dinner will be at M&W's! The rest of the meals are with your own family.

Tonight we made a menu for the weekend with a grocery list attached and I have my shopping to do tomorrow night and my cooking list for Thursday night. Packing will happen tomorrow night and Thursday and Terry will load the trailer while I cook.

I am excited to go, and refuse to look at the weather forecast. I will pack for cold and rain, and anything other than that will be BONUS! Jill and I have broken the jinx of camping in the rain together, so I have every confidence that it will be a beautiful weekend.

This will be my first Thanksgiving ever, without Stephanie here. Stephanie, inadvertinaly changed the way we do Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was just like any other long weekend for our family (with a little extra food) when they were little but THANKSGIVING weekend took on a whole different meaning starting the year Stephanie went off to University.

2002 was the start of the "I love HOMECOOKING" traditions... and we typically filled the weekend with the kids favorite foods. That year, when she came home from her first 6 weeks of living in dorms and eating cafeteria food, she was sooo excited to eat home cooked food. Mashed potatoes and real veggies. She hummed while she ate.. for the entire weekend. This seemed to be the trend.... and continued when Scott and Michelle came home the first year they went to ST FX...

Stephanie and Natsumi.. making pies 2002

2003 making a huge batch of perogies.. like.. .hundreds of them!

2006.. Keji.. and we had terrible photography skills this day and couldn't seem to get a good picture.. but it sure was a laugh trying to set up the camera and then get into the shot...

2007.. sisters doing "sister" things

Keji last year. I love this picture except ...... Sean wasn't in it. He couldn't make it because we had Ferry problems that weekend (not our first battle with the Digby Ferry). I missed the opportunity to have my whole family in one picture this summer.. geesh... you would think that when we were all dressed up and pretty we would have taken the whole family in one shot!

We will raise a glass this Thanksgiving and wish Stephanie & Sean were with us, but we will be thankful we are all healthy, safe and happy.