Happy Thanksgiving - 2009

Happy Thanksgiving!

We hope all is well with you and yours on this day of being thankful for where we've been, where we are, and where we hope to be going.

We were able to get the whole family to pose for a shot.

But, I get ahead of myself... Here is a table setting that Karen put together.

And the boys were busy, cleaning up outside.

Meanwhile, I worked on the deep-fried turkey. Here it is, going into the hot oil.

Taa-daa! It's all the way in and we don't have a redneck flame-job going on.

And we were cooking the bird using a thermal indicator. This thing will page me when the bird's temperature rises from 59 degrees to 152.

More work was done to set things up outside (and there's another table setting by Karen).

After their 10 minutes of fame out back, the boys went back to playing their video games...

Then the family members began to arrive.

What perfect timing, they're all here.

And as is usual for our family, we all congregated in the kitchen.

Kim saw the 'fuzz' on my chin and decided to play with it...

Outside, Frank-William got in a little bit of soccer practice.

After the deep-fried turkey was done, Uncle Frank had at it with an electric knife.

And Katrina was busy as anything, getting the dishes arranged, working on the mashed potatoes and prepping other 'fixins' too.

At about this time, I showed off a Floridian tradition of having stone crab claws for Thanksgiving dinner.

Then we hald hands for the prayer led by Uncle Frank.

Ditto.

Ditto again.

Man, there were quite a few of us in Karen's kitchen...

Let the chow-down begin!

Karen took matters in hand (and a hammer) and whacked at the crab claws for the kids.

Ah, don't they look cute together?

Here are two members of the prep team, tired and watching things go by.

It turns out that today was Jan's birthday, so we just had to have a cake...

And when she opened one of her cards and it began playing music, the whole room started dancing.

Hey, look at that! Now she has her own Miami Dolphins jersey to wear.

And Aunt Martha gave Jan some beautiful figurines.

Meanwhile, Uncle Frank and I just sat and talked for a while in the living room.

When I went out into the back yard, a couple of the kids wanted to go for a canoe ride, so I played tour guide.

Luann took this picture while I was out canoeing. Not sure what is going on, so I'll let you use your imagination.

Willy and Kim, soaking up the Central Florida atmosphere. We keep trying to convince them to move to the Tampa Bay area.

Katrina gave some of her cousins a ride in the hammock.

And Luann took this shot of all 4 of the Stevens Kids. It was hard to get them to sit still long enough to take this picture.

Ah, time to roast some marshmallows.

The day is coming to an end so Katrina and Bradley unwind in the hammock. We had a bunch of fun, caught up on all of the family news and realized how good it is to have a family like ours.

Getting Close To Finishing At Karen's

We finally got the arbor put together and while we were at it, we did a few other things around the house too.

It was nice to see that Kylor was home and that he wanted to help out.

At this point, the forms have been taken off and he is putting the dirt that we took out of the holes around the concrete pads.

Next, we took the posts and placed them on the pads to see if we might have to trim the trees above the arbor. Yes, it's going to fit nicely without having to trim anything.

Here's a picture of Karen describing to Tony what the arbor will look like after the top section has been assembled and placed on the posts. And in case I hadn't mentioned it before (I have), Tony is Karen's boyfriend and believe me, he was a big help this weekend.

At one point, Karen and Kylor jumped in the canoe to enjoy a moment in Nature, so I handed my camera to Kylor so he could take some pictures. By what I could see from the following images, I think he did pretty well.

He got this nice shot of a Great Blue Heron in flight... I never thought of trying to get a picture like this from a rear perspective.

And he shows his artistic leanings too with this shot that demonstrates contrasting color, shading and vertical/horizontal elements.

Then he got this shot of a mother Muskovy duck and 12 (twelve!) ducklings following her in tight formation.

Well, it's back to business as Uncle Frank and I placed the upper sections, that he had previously repaired at home, on top of the posts.

With each of us on a ladder, the framework is coming together pretty quickly now.

Since Kylor was doing the photography, he realized he needed to step back a bit in order to show that Aunt Martha was out here with us too.

And here is the finished product. After all that work, it really does look nice.

Next, we removed the broken post for the mailbox out front and once again, I started mixing up some more concrete...

While I worked on the post, Uncle Frank cut some new pieces for the mailbox mounts.

And it all came together nicely. After this, Uncle Frank and Aunt Martha left for home, so Kylor 'spotted' me while I pulled some new wiring up in the attic for the luminaire section over the island in the kitchen. That's pretty much what we have done so far and I think that's about as much as we can do in preparation for the upcoming celebration.

Because ready or not, Thanksgiving is just around the corner...