Family Thanksgiving Day

Yesterday we celebrated Thanksgiving a bit early with Gabe's mom's side of the family. The different ways that families celebrate Thanksgiving (and other holidays) is always interesting to me. Gabe's family, for example, has recently started the tradition of holding Thanksgiving the Saturday before at a local restaurant (renting a banquet room.) This works out very nice for 2 reasons, (1) all together, counting significant others, there's close to 30 people, I think and (2) this way no one has to cook or clean-up.

This year was mostly organized by Gabe's Aunt Pam. There were some activities for the kids including bowling, a beanbag toss, puzzles, and a turkey-handprint-drawing contest. (Sidenote: G3 won first place...and the fact that his Grammy was the judge didn't escape anyone, especially considering G3 can't even draw yet!!)

Gabe's Uncle David with the 2 youngest members of the family, Gabe (16 mo) and Maddison (18mo)

There was also "fun and games" for the grown-ups. Cheesy? Yes. Fun? Yes. We had a "guess who" game in which we had to identify the family member by his or her baby picture. We played "guess the unique person" game in which there was a unique fact about each person and we had to ask questions to figure it out. There was much cheating on this game but a lot of laughs too...and everyone was apparently shocked that Gabe's sister MaryBeth was the 2007 Fantasy Football Champ! We had a gag gift exchange, a raffle to raise money for the Salvation Army (and 3 cash prizes), and even Jackpot Bingo.

Unfortunately, as is par for the course on a busy day, our little G3 was Baby No-Nap as well as Baby No-Eat. So by 7pm we were heading home with a very tired, hungry, and injured little boy (multiple falls led to a goose egg on his head.) We missed Jackpot Bingo, but hey, there's always next year!

The immediate extended family--(bottom row) Gabe's nephew Steven, mom and G3, nephew Christopher, sister Cheri, (top row) his cousin Dorothy, brother-in-law Bryan, sister MaryBeth, and smokin' hot wife Lindsay:) Oh and Gabe.