Well, it had been 5 long years since Connie last hosted Thanksgiving dinner at her house. It was a holiday she loved every year. Having all of her family together for a big party was what she always looked forward to. Here is one of several group pictures taken (left) . Several people who didn't get in the picture included, Victoria, Destiny and her boyfriend, Christopher, Celeste and their new baby, Cory and her Mom, and Cynthia. With all of the girls in town, we initially planned to celebrate Thanksgiving together but decided to make it a bigger family affair.
The good news for me is that I didn't have to cook anything. Everyone else brought stuff. We had enough to feed a small army (of Italians) including 3 turkeys and 2 hams. Of course, I had to sample all of it. You wanna' be polite, ya know! We covered one whole table (the pool table) with desserts, including the double decker carrot cake (to the right) brought by Jessica Viesca. Actually, I only had 3 jobs: (1) Supply the space (house) for the gathering, (2) Have beer, cokes, wine coolers and margarita mix (ahem, this was the most important job of the night), and (3) stay out of the way!
Everyone had their favorite drinks in hand. My cup was labelled as, "Whore-hay", which phonetically sounded like my name in Spanish, "Jorge". Please ignore the dirty pictures on the cups --- a side effect of the alcohol content in the glass.
We were joined by Clint and Michelle who dropped in for an overnight visit from Austin.
Kevin was the star of the night and everyone had to hold him.
Jordan got dressed up for the occasion, and appeared to be 13-going-on-18!
During the evening, Michael made a toast to Connie who would have loved the gathering and would have partied hard. We all miss her dearly.
During the day, there was excessive drinking and eating, a lot of lounging around, watching the Dallas Cowboys lose spectatularly to the Philadelphia Eagles, playing "21" and music (but just the best oldies). About 10 people hung out until the next morning. There were bodies everywhere. But a great time was had by all.
As usual, we had a great time and we're already looking forward to next year.