Well, I pulled it off. I hosted my family of twelve people for Thanksgiving this year, which I realized, is pretty daunting to attempt to do when your toddler is running under foot. (Thank you John, for taking Miles swimming so I could bake the pies!) I can’t say I kept my cool 100% of the time during the 24 hours of prepping for the event (somewhere John is laughing out loud at the thought of me remaining calm this past week) but once things got rolling, I really had a great time putting it all together. You’ll notice neither John, nor I, are in this photo, because when you host, you are the last to sit down. You know me though, I’m always focused on my little guy, who didn’t feel like waiting for me to sit down, to dig right in.

Bummer that the photo shows the “kid table” and not the rest of my pretty table. Oh well, I ended up sitting at the kid’s table myself, so that was my memory anyway!

I think it was a successful Thanksgiving (though next time, we’ll work on our Turkey technique and I did over bake the chocolate dessert crust-bummer!) and I’m always amazed when (almost) the whole family can get together with everybody’s crazy schedules, even if just for a few hours.

Even amongst the hectic week of preparing for Thanksgiving and feeling guilty for not starting my Christmas shopping yet, I’m still feeling very blessed for my healthy family. I haven’t always that in my life and the memory of those times helps me keep perspective amongst the craziness of this time of year, and what a blessing that is.

So I’m wishing all you of some togetherness, health and love this Thanksgiving weekend, with family, or friends. I’m very thankful you all come around to pop in on what I’ve got going on here, and of course, always thankful for the wonderful comments you leave.

Have a great weekend! I’m actually up late working and it’s time to get to bed. (I will be willing myself not to make a pit stop at the fridge for some late night pumpkin pie!)