Day #5 - Thanksgiving

Well we just said farewell to our last guests of the night. Today was a blast. Thanksgiving makes it easy to have a family day. Bruce was home all day long! Lea and David were feeling a little better. Lea was still a little woozy and spent the day upstairs so she wouldn't spread anything to anyone else. David had a bad headache in the morning, but slept it off before friends and family showed up. We cooked most of our food yesterday, so today was just getting tables set up and things like that. We had Shannon and her boys, Andy & Dana and their kids, Rachel and Ryan and their daughter (aka - honorary Palmer's) and Stacey and her kids over for the Thanksgiving meal. Everyone brought plenty of food and when all the stomachs were full, the counters and bowls still seemed full - it didn't even look like we had made a dent. We are so blessed to live in a land of plenty. I think we as Americans take that for granted. Even our 'poor' are better off than many in the world. I hope that the spirit and reason of Thanksgiving never fades away in my family. It is a time to be with family and ponder on those things that we are blessed with and give thanks for them. Not just a time to get ready to go shopping or get ready for the Christmas giving/getting (although it does help set the mood). It's nice to be 'forced' to sit back and ponder about the many, many blessings we enjoy. We had 18 kids in the house and they all got along beautifully! They played and watched movies the entire day. We ate at 1:00 and the last family left about 9:00ish. The adults chatted and played Apples to Apples and chatted some more. Some of our kids went to bed early because they weren't feeling good - even Robby is coming down with some type of cold :( It was a good day - I am really enjoying this family week, just wish everyone felt better.

Cousins Jacob and Emma 'talking' to each other