Thankful for you.

I hope you had a beautiful Thanksgiving weekend. Ours was very nice, especially so since I had the opportunity to cook just what I wanted, while family and friends provided what I didn't have time to do.

There is a mongrel cur Dante dog curled up tightly next to my hip on the couch as I type. He has finally conked out after a very busy few days.

The celebration started with cinnamon rolls and sausage balls, along with coffee: one of my very favorite combinations.

Our good friend Cindy provided the turkey, and what a turkey it was! The smoky flavor was perfect and tasted divine with Mom's gravy and spinach madeline. For Thursday lunch we also had cornbread dressing, cranberry sauce, Mom's cranberry salad, yeast rolls, and my favorite recipe of chiffon pumpkin pie.

Mom gave me new pie crust cutters. I am completely enamored.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The past few days have been a food extravaganza. Wednesday night we had Swedish chicken, rice, and green salad, Friday night Mike grilled a pair of pork tenderloins that we enjoyed with Mattie's mess of turnip greens and cornbread, last night we had Mike's grilled chicken wings with pasta and green salad, and throughout the weekend we had Judy's pecan tassies, clove brownies, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, key lime pie, and of course leftovers available to anybody who wanted them.

We and the fridge are all stuffed. I hope Mike likes leftovers. I might never have the room in the icebox to cook again.

But it wasn't all about food. There were lots of naps taken in the sunshine.
Some handworks and planning:

New tricks to learn - Roy taught Dante how to bring the paper!

And new fashions to try on:

No, it's not a scarf on Dante. Somebody tied his favorite snaker squeaky toy around his neck. He didn't seem to mind: notice the blurred wagging tail.

And what Mississippi Thanksgiving would be complete without several different guns to shoot and football to watch? Mike was a dead-eye with the .22, but we weren't so fortunate with the GA Tech vs Georgia game. Mike is still pouting.
But that's not all. Mike and his mom and dad bought a Christmas tree while I went with a friend (whose identity will be withheld to protect the not-so-innocent) to see New Moon. It was embarrassingly bad. So bad we waited for the theater to empty afterward so no one would recognize us there. Parts made us both giggle and laugh out loud, garnering shushes from the crowd that included both tweens and grandmothers. The wolves often looked like Muppets, and the action was punctuated with awkward drawn-out intense conversations that made me uncomfortable for both the actors and characters. And what's even more embarrassing is that we both enjoy the books. But the most embarrassing part is that we were all varying degrees of that intense and corny at some point back in high school. Thank Heavens we grew up. Well, most of us anyway.


He looks so young in this photo, but I still have to say... Yum. There was great eye candy. Even though his teeth were so blindingly white they looked like Chiclets.

So it was a lovely fun-filled, food-filled, family-filled week. Not 30 minutes after Roy and Judy left, work called Mike, so we're back to the real world and the old grind. Laundry is running, and dishes are washing while he works in the office here at the house.

Unsurprisingly, Dante is still asleep.