Oh My Tummy!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!

I just got home from a day of feasting, laughing, story-telling, teasing, complimenting, sharing, talking & more talking & of course complaining about being too full as we get up for more pumpkin pie!

Both our families live out of state so we join a group of close friends each year for our Thanksgiving meal, & it is so fun, I love it! We each bring our specialty dish & bask in the compliments & the rare moments of silence as everyone has their mouths full at once.

There were about 16 of us this year, we purposely tried to keep it down after it began to grow too huge in the last few years. This was just right for visiting & being able to hear each other in the crowded living room-turned into dining room.

After a leisurely meal of all the classic dishes, & a few bottles of wine, the men cleared the table (great group huh?) & disappeared out to the porch to smoke pipes & the women found themselves alone & laughed about it looking like the old fashioned days of Gone With The Wind when the ladies would go take a lady-like nap while the men smoked.

I have lunch with these same people every single Sunday & I also work with some of them every day, yet we still have so much to talk about every time we get together! It's amazing how many stories & dreams we all have & how fun it is to hear the new ones along with the old ones that the entire group could recite from memory. I usually never want to leave these gatherings, but after several hours a shift kind of happens & different ones begin to head to the kitchen to package up some left-overs to take & my hubby starts to give me the "the look" that means he's done & ready to go home.

There are lots of hugs & kisses & thank-yous as we head out to our cars & fill the trunks with goodies for the next day. We are all getting together on Saturday night just for fun & we will probably still have more stories & dreams to talk about then!

Our tradition is really not very different looking than the normal family gatherings that most are able to do each year. We are a family in the truest sense & we have chosen to be in one anothers' lives, through the good, the bad & the ugly. I love these people & I am loved by them. Don't want to sound corny here, but, isn't that what the holiday is about? Getting together with those you love & giving thanks to God for each of them? That & getting up to watch the Macy's Parade of course!