Thanksgiving at The Nod to Nothing House

Thanksgiving 2005 is the first year that my in-laws' Thanksgiving was moved to our house. Though now that it's here, it includes my highschool friends and their son, Conner, so I guess it really does belong to us. It used to be held at my grandmother-in-law Millie's house in Osseo, but she finally decided it was a lot of work doing all that cooking and shopping and agreed that we could own the holiday. Which gives us two family holidays: turkey Thanksgiving with my inlaws and fondue Easter with my blood relatives. If I could figure out how to integrate a beer-themed holiday in about July, I think I'd be fully booked. Twelve adults and five kids makes a pretty good housefull. Festivities included supper (turkey [two, one smoked, one baked], pies, stuffing, beans, potatoes, raspberry jello, wine, beer, et al), Madden 2004 on the PS2, beating on Bob the big green bear, a few rounds of Texas Hold 'em (the same chair always won, fortunately Pooteewheet and I inhabited it for two out of three games), and find all the toys and leave them all over the house (never my favorite, but fully expected).

What was lost this year in translation/transition was the family shove football game. Last year I took a big leap for a ball and came down off the end of the yard, an act of athleticism that cost me about four months of a kink in my leg (I refer to it privately as a Mr. Mustard Volleyball-like incident, though his sports injury came well after mine). I have more yard and no cliff at the back end, which might have made it much easier, but it also seemed quite a bit colder than it was last year so the subject only made a brief appearance and disappeared. We settled for watching Mark and Sue get beat in Madden by Jesse - Sue made a much stronger showing as the 2004 Vikings than Mark made in his game.

On to the pictures:

The main table - once a conference room table for the local nurses association, now my excuse for not buying anything new. In the lower right corner you can see Eryn studiously not eating by sitting on her sit n' spin.


The kids table. Conner was in this picture, but he's hidden behind my aunt-in-law Sue's head. Note that they're getting ready to play some poker as soon as they're done - the chips are open on the wine cart behind them.


Seth and Jesse. This picture was exceedingly difficult to capture as the amount of time that elapsed between the food being placed in the front of them and the food completely disappearing was almost instantaneous. I think they're secretly hamster children and just pushed the food back in their cheeks and ate it later while playing. That's my nephew Max in the booster on the left. It was announced that he's going to have a sibling in about half a year, though everyone seemed already aware of that fact before the announcement and were more just getting an announcement that the official announcement had finally been made and they could act surprised.


The other kids' table - my aunt in law and two uncle in laws.


Bob the big green bear - a victim of a vicious boing-ing. Conner, Eryn, Seth and Jesse all abused poor Bob - he's much squishier than he was before Thanksgiving. Bob got angry and tried to suffocate Jesse, but Seth was sitting on Bob, who was on Jesse, so maybe that doesn't count as revenge.


A picture of football watching time in the basement.

The long Minnesota goodbye. Eryn has mastered it - she sits next to the door and spins on her sit n' spin for thirty minutes. That's what it feels like to everyone else, so why not just create the sensation directly and be done with it.