We are so lucky to be able to spend time with friends and family at Thanksgiving. For the past few years we've taken the whole week off to drive down to Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia, a great trip, and this year my sister Barbara was with us, too. We had THREE Thanksgiving dinners this time, the first on Tuesday in Lansdale, PA with Megan's parents Kent and Sue and Kent's sister Donna who flew up from Houston. We love visiting them and had a great time, as always. We laugh enough on this trip to keep us in a good mood for months. Their sweet new puppy Peanut bonded with Ed right away - they were like
this (X)!
Ed cooked his famous turkey-in-the-Weber, and the rest of us pitched in with sides, wine and pie, yummy. We did get in some games of Liverpool, our family game. If the picture of Kent looks familiar, it's because I used it last year! He was so busy counting turkeys at
Whole Foods where he manages the meat department, that we didn't get to see enough of him. Hope you got some sleep on Thursday, Kent!
My family lived in King of Prussia, PA when it was still surrounded by farms - that would be 1956-57. My brother Rob wasn't born yet, but Barbara, Richard, Peter and I loved to go to
Valley Forge and run around playing cowboys and Indians in the woods, peeking into the huts, and generally being rowdy. I always remember it as autumn with leaves on the ground. So when we left Lansdale we headed over there. They now have a wonderful education center and theater along with miles of trails, many monuments, reproduced soldiers' huts, George Washington's original headquarters, etc. It was just fascinating. I realized I did not know nearly enough about Washington when I read
George Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow in April - a history buff's must-read.
Next stop: Seven Valleys, PA to see Ed's cousin Judy and her husband Pat who put us all up at their beautiful home. More, fun, wonderful food and, yes, laughter!
On the actual day of Thanksgiving we all headed over to see Ed's other cousin Debbie and her husband Ed in Bel Air, MD for...a Thanksgiving dinner extraordinaire!
Turkey, ham, unbelievable appetizers, side dishes and many desserts. That house was FULL of kids, cousins, aunts, uncles, you name it. There were THREE table set up in the house!
Ed's Aunt Joyce is in these photos. She's 82, going strong and is the last of his father's siblings.
We'd had enough great food to last us for weeks, but when we told Pat we wanted Maryland crabs, he plotted a great route for us to take over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to the Eastern Shore and down to
St. Michaels, MD,
"The Town That Fooled the British" and home of the
Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. We had never heard of it, so we asked our waitress for the story. It seems that during the War of 1812 the townspeople got wind that the British were sailing up the Bay to attack their town, so they evacuated, shut down all lights and fires, then hung hundreds of lanterns in the trees away from their homes to fool the British into bombarding the "town" and harming no people or property. Pretty resourceful, right? And the crabs were great! Barbara had oysters topped with crabmeat, but Ed and I had fun cracking boiled crabs. Are we full yet???
On to Fredericksburg, VA. My Dad had asked his family to come down for a visit and, considering how many of us there are, a good number showed up. My family is used to me organizing them into photogenic groups, fortunately, so they all agreed to hold still on and off throughout the weekend.
For those of you who haven't met us all, here we are. Back row: Patrick, Gillian, Ed, Anthony, Richard and Henry. Front row: Rob, Barbara, Miriam, Dad, Najat, Sarae, Dick and Ginny.
So, we had yet another wonderful Thanksgiving celebration with amazing Moroccan food from our step-mother Najat, walks, swimming, Liverpool games, yes, lots of laughter and a delicious brunch on Sunday before our North Caroline family had to head home. Our cousin Janet and her husband Leon came over from Rockville, MD on Sunday and added another happy dimension to the group. I asked a waiter at the brunch to take one last big group photo (I can't resist, honestly, it's a disease!), but am glad I did because we all look great! And happy and well-fed.
Well, we're home now and remembering what a wonderful time we had with great friends and relations. By Sunday Ed was finally sick of the camera:
