Thanksgiving 2019

This year may be the last big family Thanksgiving for awhile. Next year my oldest niece will be at college and my parents will be on a mission. So whatever happens next year won't be the same. We tried to hold up as many family traditions as possible.

My mom cooked all day

Emily contributed this lovely apple cake, which she made entirely by herself. I've decided cake > pie and love a way to work it into a pie dominated holiday.

My whole family gathered. 

Including Lucy and Jane. If you've ever seen the Phineas and Ferb series, it's kind of like that. Except for Phineas and Ferb manage to hide the evidence better. 

I'm glad we got to have one last traditional Thanksgiving before the kids started to scatter and the grandparents skipped town. It was a good one.

Napoleon, don't be jealous I've been chatting online with babes all day

My girls love Halloween. I think it's the dressing up part... no... it's the candy part. Either way, Halloween is just a giant sack full of joy in our house.

Jane knew right from the start she wanted to be Napoleon Dynamite. She researched the role heavily.

She sketched up ideas for a costume:

                                 

She learned the dance:

 And she perfected the stare. Emily elected to be Eleven this year from Stranger Things. Pictured here in her Starcourt Mall Battle ensemble, she is ready for her very first teenage party. She had a blast. Jane went trick-or-treating and shut down the neighborhood, as usual.

Can you guess which pumpkin goes with which girl? I hope to be able to show this pic in 20 years when Emily is a data analyst at NASA... or something else equally great somewhere else. 

And, of course, would it be Halloween without Lisa's donuts? No. That's a ridiculous suggestion. Lisa lives on the next block and she has already assured herself a mansion in heaven by putting up with Jane wandering over to play all the time and by providing me with these:

Who needs Christmas when you've got Halloween?