Thanksgiving

I love the meaning of Thanksgiving, I love eating feasting, and I love having family around.  This is a favorite for me. 

We had an awesome Thanksgiving dinner.  Grammy has it perfected; from the perfect fall-of-the-bone turkey to the from scratch caramel apple pies a la mode.  I contributed the stuffing, which is only fair, since I am likely to eat half the batch by myself ;). Grammy put together a really cute service project for the kids to gift bags of needed items to the elderly residents of the assisted living facility.  The kids really enjoyed it.  She also had them make leaves of gratitude for the thankfulness tree.  She is known for coming up with sweet little traditions like this.

In addition to Thanksgiving, we had another reason to celebrate this weekend.  After many years of hard work and high achievements, Rick (Papa) retired from his position as manager of the APS power plant.  We remembered his accomplishments and celebrated his future and his freedom with a big dinner in the upstairs old theater-style banquet hall at Romo’s.  Jake, Ryan, and Ali all said a little something, and the grandkids each made a wish about how Papa should spend his newly acquired free time.  For the record, Gabe wants to go shooting with Papa.  It was great night that I think we will always remember. 

But my favorite part of the whole five days was a simple thing.  Simply the togetherness.  In previous Taylor Thanksgivings, the adults have gotten to enjoy being reunited, but it’s getting really special to sit back and observe the kids spend their entire time caught up in boisterous fun with each other.  With them all being so close in age, it’s like they have built-in best buddies within their own family.  It’s pretty cool.

And we had gorgeous weather this year.  Bonus.

One would think that the grander moments in life would get more attention in photos, but this isn’t true for me.  While I can usually capture some awesome laying around the bed shots on an ordinary weekday morning, I have a really hard time documenting our milestone moments in life, because I’m too busy living them.  So my apologies for zip photos of Thanksgiving Day, including the amazing dinner, zero photos of the kids’ service project (which I didn’t witness firsthand), and zilch photos of Papa’s retirement party.  Instead, feast your eyes on some random moments from the in-between times (which are still loved, to be sure).

In addition to our meals at home, we ate out twice, and we had the restaurants to ourselves on both occasions.  Good thing for that too, because with eleven children and eight adults (we were missing one of Jake’s brothers and one of his sisters and their families), we took up the place. 

Did I mention that Grammy is also a clown?  She goes by the name of Lolli, and all the children adore her (especially Ari). 

Feelings of gratitude are my favorite.  And I have plenty to be thankful for.