Another year, another turkey, another apple pie won the hard way:



Thanksgiving dinner is THAT much sweeter after you've run a five-mile road race. Ain't that the truth. I strut in every year, rosy cheeked from the exercise, holding up my apple pie in triumph.

I brought my boyfriend to our celebration for the first time (NOTE: he is NOT pictured above, in case you were thinking that--the fellow pictured there is my BROTHER). It was total family overload, but RM handled it like a champ. Thirty-plus-person dinners are normal for our Thanksgiving/Christmas/any holiday gatherings, and tripping over all of the cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents running about any given house is part of the fun.

Not only that, but our family gatherings always feature a whirlwind three days of driving all over Eastern Massachusetts to visit different relatives' houses. We live in NY, so it's hard to get out there and see family very often. The only way to make up for it is to go insane at holiday time, and cram it all into a single visit.


I missed my family's celebrations last year for the first time in my life and it was good to be back.