Thanksgiving Dinner on a Grand Scale

Each year our church throws a big old family get together around the Thanksgiving holiday. It kicks off our *season of generosity* focus (since technically generosity is never out of season, right?) We were surprised with the earliness of the date. This meal always feels like the start of the holiday season, and I'm not sure I was quite ready for it to be starting this soon. However, one treat was that Grandma J was still in town to enjoy the festivities with us.

As always, our girls were eager to help serve at the gathering. Judi and I took them early, and then began the challenging task of saving 11 seats. My friend S helped me find a table that wasn't reserved for small groups or already had chairs leaning in with the universal message of "reserved" accompanying their angle. I was thankful, again, for the smidge of ASL I've managed to pick up, because there are so many signing people to visit with at our church now!

Oh, why 11 seats? Well, we saved seats for our friends the K's . . . I also had to ask what the sign for dessert was in ASL from Mr. K, our teacher :) Buck thinks I do a good job signing, I think the people of the Deaf culture are so kind and grateful that someone is trying to communicate, that they are VERY forgiving of the actual message communicated ;)

I guess there's not much else to tell--the food was tasty. I thought it was catered, but later the church posted pics of people mixing potatoes in the church kitchen. Our girls were invited to serve portions this year, Gabby got promoted to turkey--that's the big time! They carried water and wore their own aprons (okay, their parents' aprons :). It was perhaps the fastest dinner ever--in, out, and on the way in an hour.

One funny tidbit, Graysen was asked if he wanted "dressing" on his plate. He's like, "No, I don't think so." He had never heard stuffing called dressing before :) When he peeked in the stuffing container and saw what it actually was, he's like, "Yeah! I want some of that!" In fact, he went back for seconds of that and had a good helping of cranberries, too. Now that is something I don't usually want on my plate ;)







Graysen asked if he could eat dessert first, sure why not? Brennen asked if he could sit at the kids' table with the E's and the M's--sure, why not?! Buck asked if he could drive separately with the boys so he could arrive and leave whenever he wanted to--sure, why not :) I'm just glad we all got to enjoy a meal together--with a few hundred of our *friends.*