Happy Turkey Day!

We drove to Rock Falls on Wednesday afternoon. It took us 4 1/2 hours. Traffic was not bad at all, the weather was nice, and the kids did great in the car, especially since they slept about half of the trip. We were tired when we got there, so we ordered the pizza from the best pizza place in the world, Angelo's, and went to bed early.

Everyone got up at 5:45 the next morning, which was not such a bad thing considering we had all had to shower and get dressed, I had to make a pie, and my mom had to make biscuits, a casserole and frost a cake. I gave up on trying to find a second dish to bring, so we just brought a couple bottles of wine.

As you can see, J and Matthew were very excited for dinner to begin. Embry had a great time playing with all of cousins, and it was wonderful to see most of my extended family. Neither I nor J got to eat much, though. Naptime came and went and right about the time that it was time to eat, Embry decided it was time to go. (She was also crabby due to her newly discovered allergy to my Mom's cats. She was on Children's Claritin the whole time we were there.) So, we took the kids home to sleep, and I returned to visit with the family.

Shortly after I returned we went on our annual post dinner walk. This year we walked across the brand new walkway that spans the Rock River 2 blocks from my Mom's house. It was cold and windy (so I am kind of glad that the kids were warm in their beds), but still fun. After our walk, we feel that we have burned off enough of dinner to start on dessert. Yes, I said start. You see, when there are enough desserts for everyone to have a whole pie to themselves, you have to pace yourself.

Here is the best shot I got of my pie, the one in the middle. It turned out to look much nicer that it tasted. I left out the sugar. It was not totally devoid of sweetness, as I did put in candied yams and maple syrup, but I could tell that something was definitely missing. Luckily, someone else brought a pumpkin pie as well. It was great with a huge pile of Reddi-whip on top!

Among the other desserts were a pecan pie, apple, peach, coconut cream, banana cream (my all time favorite pie), a coconut cake, and a trifle. All homemade and all delicious. I only tasted 4 of them while we were there, but I had to make J and Embry a plate to take home, so I packed up all the ones that I hadn't yet tried and brought them back to Mom's.

Embry dug right in. I think she may have let J have some too. :)

The rest of the weekend was spent visiting, chasing kitties, and playing outside (and NOT shopping). Embry loved the huge pile of leaves in the backyard. That's my Mom with her head sticking out of the pile. We don't have any trees in our yard, so this was a new experience. We ended up going home a little early,so that Embry could recover from her allergies before school on Monday. But overall we had a pretty good time.