Early Turkey Fun

I named this blog "tales from a sears house" in honor of the house we live in near the University of Delaware, but for the past four months, most of my entries have focused on all of the projects we've been doing at our beach shack.

But this past weekend, we remembered why we call our Sears house "the small house that lives big." We hosted a pre-Thanksgiving dinner for 12 (including ourselves), so that people could spend the actual holiday with other family members.

Here's everyone on the deck after dinner:

The group included my two grown kids, Alex and Christine, Alex's girlfriend Ashleigh and her parents, my kids' father and his wife, my best friend Jenn (whose husband Martin was with us in spirit from across the pond in the Cotswolds), and Jenn's son Steven and his wife Lauren. 

Ashleigh's beautiful 7-month-old lab Honey also joined us for the weekend.  Here she is with Alex, who loves her as much as Ashleigh does:

Paxton couldn't understand why we would allow such a boisterous creature into our house.  He quickly figured out that Honey doesn't like steps, so he hid upstairs.  Here, he's checking to see if we've gotten rid of her yet:

Christine, Ashleigh and I started the day off with the Turkey Trot in Newark.  The two girls did the 10K, but I limited myself to the 5K.  Here we are before their race started.  Alex was the official dog sitter (at least that was his excuse for not lacing up his shoes and joining the throng):

My awesome husband cooked a wonderful dinner--his fried turkey breasts were apparently so good that 11 people demolished two of them. I'm a vegetarian so I freed up my share for others to enjoy.  

It took our regular kitchen table and four chairs, a folding table and four matching chairs, plus two stools and two folding wrought-iron garden chairs to seat everyone.  It was a tight fit in our little kitchen, but it was worth it to have everyone in the same place eating the great food Doug cooked.

 Here he is enjoying the aftermath of the party, relieved that everyone had fun and he could finally rest:

At this point, Honey was too tired to be bothered with Pax, so he ventured downstairs and sought safety in my lap, but he was still definitely on guard for danger:

By Sunday, though, everyone was gone except for me, Doug, and Christine, and Pax took advantage of the quiet to have a nap on Christine's lap:

I am truly blessed to have two wonderful kids, an awesome husband and great friends.

Doug took this great shot of me with Alex and Christine:

And Christine reciprocated by shooting one of me and Doug--appropriately enough hanging around the dishwasher after our guests had left:

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!