Thanksgiving in St.Cloud

Finally after 23 hours on the road I finally made back home. I was great to have Pat pick me up at the airport shuttle me around.
I had a fabulous meal and conversation with Jim and a few glasses of good wine culminating in 7 hours of blissful sleep!
Thanksgiving Morning Jim drove me over to Kate and Tom's. The trimpelets have grown a ton and are very cute!!
I then got behind the wheel on the left hand side for the first time in 18 months and began the drive to Brigid and Dennis's new home outside of St.Cloud.
Driving was not as unfamiliar as I thought.This new device called a Tomtom was helpful.This device gives you a visual as well as and audio picture of where you are going and if you make a wrong turn it promptly tells you that as well. I do not know why they named it a Tomtom when they should have called it" your spouse"!
It was with great joy to pull into the driveway and see all my brothers and sisters for the first time in too long!
The day was full of activities and food and hugs and everything that a Thanksgiving gathering should be. The boys all headed outside to "practice" shooting the shotguns, we threw 125 clay targets and used 250 shells ,I think more "practice" is needed.
It must of been and unwritten rule communicated through the kid network because as Jimmy,Kay and Billy were playing full contact ring around the Rosie back in Bangalore, Finn,Riley,Jack,Maureen and Emily were doing the same thing here! We however are grateful that no rocks were thrown, we did experience a couple of stray books traveling the length of the living room.
We had a huge spread of food including cranberries, turkey,stuffing,potato's,salad,bread,wine and PIE!!!
Names were drawn for Christmas gift exchange hugs were given and we all retired for the night.

We missed Kevin,Angela,Lexi,Michaela,Isaiah and Henry as they were at the inlaws.We also missed Tracy,Jimmy ,Kay and Billy ( I did the most).

Happy Thanksgiving to all and to all a goodnight!
Love
Tom