Last year, when Tom and I were at Chickamauga, we had to work on Thanksgiving.  It was an interesting day, but I really missed being with family.  This year we are in Ohio and have been able to spend plenty of days with family.  We are with my parents a couple of days a week and with John and Jackie and couple of days a week.  Yesterday we were so blessed to spend Thanksgiving with family.

My sister hosted Thanksgiving this year.  It was their first year to host Thanksgiving since they moved into their smaller house.  There were 14 of us at dinner.  We were just missing my sister-in-law’s two oldest, who spent the day with their father’s family.  Everyone else in the family was able to be there and we really enjoyed talking, laughing, eating and catching up.

Tom and I ate dinner at the cousins’ table (“where the cool people eat”).  I have to admit that I was hard pressed to keep up with the cultural references at the table.  Television show and current video game references pretty much went over my head.  But we heard how Devon and Jared are doing in college.  We heard some of Jared’s adventures with being a Resident Advisor.  Devon showed us pictures from his summer in Spain.  Kat talked about all things South Korean, which is her current passion.  Grace talked about some of the things she is trying to do as the President of the Art Club in her high school.  And we had a weird and heated discussion about Gibraltar, which Jared insists is very important.

The food was as good as the conversation.  My sister had a delicious turkey with stuffing and mashed potatoes and the rest of us filled in the other food.  John and Jackie brought cranberry sauce and creamed corn.  Steve and Kathy brought crudites.  I brought bread and Mom brought pie and cheesecake.  Nobody was hungry at the end of that meal!

After dinner the younger folks went downstairs and I stayed upstairs to catch up on family news.  The Columbus contingent had to leave to get back to dogs and other family responsibilities.  Those of us who stayed played Apples to Apples – Jared loves the game.  My dad insists he doesn’t like the game because “it doesn’t make any sense” but guess who won!

Then it was time to head home.  As an added bonus, Tom and I got to spend time in the car coming and going with Mom and Dad.

It was a wonderful Thanksgiving with family.  There really is no place like home for the holidays.  Spending Thanksgiving with family renewed the ties that bind us in love and gave us another way to count our blessings.