Thanksgiving

This was the third year in a row that PJO and I have hosted my family for Thanksgiving dinner. My parents are divorced, but they get along pretty well (it's been 17 years since they split, but even then it was amicable), so both of them came and my two younger brothers came up. And of course, the cats joined in, as much as cats can.
The menu is pretty much the same every year, with one or two variations. This year, we had turkey and ham, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, cranberries, green bean casserole and pumpkin and apple pie. I realize that is a lot of food for 6 of us, but PJO and I eat leftover Thanksgiving food for about 3 days after and usually invite other people to join us.
The decorations are also the same every year. The same candles, tablecloth, napkins, etc... and I still love them all.
I love the tradition of doing the same thing every year, but I would be down for a vacation over Thanksgiving next year. It's exhausting cooking all that food. I started on Wednesday... I made both pies, cornbread for the stuffing, the cranberry sauce and prepped some of the vegetables. From preparation to clean-up, it probably took up 6 hours of my day. Then PJO and I started cooking around 10 am on Thursday and didn't finish cleaning up until 10:30pm. Granted, there was a lot of visiting with family, eating and watching tv after everyone left thrown in there, but that's a long day.

Just to show how dorky we are, here is a picture of us wearing our matching aprons while preparing our feast. You can't see it, but our names are embroidered on them too. They were gifts, but I can't deny that I love them. Pretty much anything embroidered with names or initials gets me. (although I'm slightly too practical to get monogrammed sheets or towels).