Friday bullets, Novemeber 29, 2019

I'll jump right in.

• We had a wonderful, drama-free, Thanksgiving. It was great to see extended family and catch-up. Cousins played, we had a bonfire, we ate a lot of food, and generally had a terrific time.
• As a whole, though, our family had decided that while holidays are wonderful, the day after a holiday is the best. Everyone is relaxed, there is nothing that needs to be done. There are usually a lot of yummy leftovers to eat. 
• Many people played many games over the course of the day.

• Out of the 8 pies M. made and the 2 pies that my sister-in-law brought, we have, as of tonight, just 2 1/2 pies left. I expect they will be long gone before the weekend is over.
• Speaking of pie... because our family is totally committed to pies of all kinds, I made turkey pot pie with some of the leftovers for dinner tonight. And then we had pie for dessert. Many of my children think that life does not get much better than that.
• It is hard to convince 14 people, 3 dogs, and 3 horses to all look at the camera at the same time. It is probably just as well we gave up the passing notion that it would be fun to have a couple of people hold geese. Better judgement prevailed and we skipped the geese.
• Did I tell you about the duck earlier in the week? As J. was out walking a dog after dinner, he heard a quacking sound from the hot tub pond. One of the ducks had missed all the other ducks leaving and stayed behind. Then it got dark and she got confused and cold and could get out. M. and J. rescued her and briefly brought her into the house to warm up a little bit.

P. is holding Midnight, though he kind of blends into the dark background and is hard to see.

• We don't usually do any Black Friday shopping. I hate crowds and would rather just relax with my family. But, J. and I did hit one store this afternoon. In order to make room for everyone to sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, we had to rearrange some furniture. Where I moved a couple of chairs I ended up liking far better than where they had been. They looked so good, I decided to leave them there. This is great, but it did leave a particularly empty space in the living room, giving us essentially not really anywhere to sit. I saw an ad that seemed to advertise good prices on couches so we went to check it out. It was a very good sale, and we got a nice couch and chair for less than we have seen new furniture pretty much anywhere. It will be delivered in about three weeks.
• I finished a fantastic novel the other day. I highly recommend Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield. It was so beautifully written with a wonderful story I didn't want it to end. And now it has and I am in a brief reading rut. I just can't find a new book to start, so am instead finishing up several non-fiction books that I've started but never got around to finishing. I'm going to have a find a new book to read because curling up in bed with a non-fiction book is not quite the same as curling up with a good story. 
• I need to dig out the Advent candles tomorrow, because... somehow... Advent starts on Sunday.

I'll end here. We have one more day of just holiday relaxation, though I do need to get to the store for meals to get us to Thursday when I can resume my usual shopping schedule. It seems crazy that after all the food that we have fixed and eaten that the refrigerator is getting pretty empty.