Everybody Welcome | Thanksgiving 2013

I've been prepping for Thanksgiving for about a week.  If I had started dreaming about it any earlier, I never would have gotten things done.  You know, children taught, babies bathed, etc.  I. LOVE. THANKSGIVING.  It is my love language to feed people.  Tomorrow is my superbowl.

And so I posted the menu to facebook, inviting every and any body to come partake.  And believe me, it is a good menu, meant to lure in unsuspecting folks and fill up their bellies until they can no longer move freely, and then attack them with my friendliness.

That's the basics of any good thanksgiving plan, right?

We've got 6 people coming.  Truth be told, I wanted more.  Not because those who are attending aren't good enough, I was just hoping for... chaos, I guess.  To make the holidays feel more like home.  Also, I bought a 20-pound turkey.  High hopes, you might say.  I was hoping for a find-some-extra-chairs, kids-have-to-sit-on-the-ground, adults-drinking-out-of-sippy-cups-because-we've-run-out, type of day.  The kind where there's just so many people you don't even know what to do with them all, but everyone is pleased to be together.  The fact I have 20+ people in my original family ('rents & sibs & spouses & offspring) and Handsome has 35+ first cousins may play into this idea of the ideal.

If 6 is all we get, then I'm going to love on those six as if they were 20.  And it will be a fabulous day.  And we will relive it again and again until the leftovers run out sometime in early January.  But I'm not throwing in the towel just yet.  I've got neighbors, you see.  And I don't know them very well, but we've exchanged pleasantries.  So I'm going to tape a note on their door today, see if I can't round up a few more people who love good grub and shoulder-to-shoulder holiday cheer.

If you're wondering what we're having, I've got a menu for you.  If you're trying to decide whether to make the 400 mile trek to my house, the answer is yes, and we eat at 6P.  Make it happen.

I tried to make this clickable.
I failed miserably and wasted 1.25 hours of baking time.
So if you want to know what's what, check out the pin-board that it all came from!
Please note the organization of
optional sides | necessities | desserts
I'll be eating from middle to right to left, most likely ;)

Now come, eat, drink, and let's make merry!  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

<3 M.