Thanksgiving

It has been a while but I'm back. So, thanksgiving....what a day. We made a ton of food and had a ton of left-overs. We had a great time though so it was all worth it.
When everyone came they congregated in the kitchen. I was glad to see everyone but I just didn't want to see them in the kitchen. It's a bit stressful trying to prepare a meal while having the company watching you from the other side of the counter. Besides, there is so much room elsewhere in the house. I set up the appetizers and drinks in the living room and dining room hoping that people would congregate there. But no, they still gathered in the kitchen. It ended up that they barely ate the appetizers so we had a ton of them left over.
It was unique that we had so many countries represented, something I was very thankful for. I know that many of them weren't exactly used to the typical American thanksgiving fare so it was interesting to see their reactions. The best reaction would be when a couple of them, who were hanging around the kitchen, saw my mom take the stuffing out of the turkey. Imagine being new to a country and some of the culinary delights it has to offer when you see a woman pulling stuffing out of the turkey's butt. And then to think that you are expected to eat that. Quite hilarious in my opinion.
All of the food was quite delicious. I'm sure everyone had more than enough to eat and then some. We moved onto dessert. Two of James' co-workers brought desserts in addition to the 3 pumpkin pies that I made. In the end one slice of the ice cream cake, about 4 cupcakes and half of one pie was eaten. Yikes!! That is a heck of a lot of left overs.

Olivier and a couple from Paris (how cool!!) stayed to play Pictionary. He spread the word all night that it was a great game to play and I was the person to beat. When it was guys against girls we had a noticeable command of the board. Imeine was a terrific artist, as was my mom, and I'm a great guesser. We won! We decided to switch it up a bit and move into mixed partners. I paired up with Walid (Imeine's husband) who was quite set on winning. He was obvisouly less than impressed that the guys lost the first round. It was a tense game and quite competitive but, in the end, Walid and I were the champions!! :) Yes, that is me gloating.

It was a long day but we were very thankful for all of the blessings of the year as well as the new friends in our lives. We are so thankful that we have been given the opportunity to move to Princeton and we believe that our lives have been truly blessed.