What?? We're having dinner here?!

I'd resigned myself to having a quiet, rather lonely, Thanksgiving Day. Ricky is working until 6:00, Erin and her boyfriend will be eating lunch with his grandparents, my dad and step mother are in Tennessee, Philip, our son, is in Florida. Then suddenly, things changed. Thanksgiving day will still be quiet - but busy - but Friday? Not so quite, and busier. We found out Philip will be coming up for the Alabama-Auburn game and will be here sometime Friday afternoon. That's great, but I still thought we'd just have a quiet holiday weekend. Erin had to work on Friday and my dad would still be in Tennessee. (I'm an only child, by the way. Have I ever mentioned that?) Then yesterday afternoon, I got a call from a local school telling me that Ricky had won the raffle for a meal for 20 from a local caterer! Well....yea! Uh, who's going to eat it?

I knew Friday was the only day we could do this, so I called Erin. Yes, someone was willing to swap days with her. Called Philip to verify he would be here. Yes. Then I started calling Ricky's family. He's one of seven children. So far, everyone has said they'd be here. I'm only calling the ones we're close to. They're the only ones who bother to show up at anything anyway. That means I'm calling four families, and their adult children and grandchildren. I'm counting 22-24 adults and teenagers and four little ones. Oops! That's risky with food for 20. Guess I'll need to cook a few more dishes. But worse than that, I've got to step up the cleaning!

Inside is basically under control. I'm not so very much worried about that since I got started last week, but this is what I'm looking at under the carport.

Ack! Ricky got in the attic and got down everything that looked remotely like Christmas decorations. Told me to go through this stuff. Get rid of what I don't want. This was mostly things we didn't necessarily use. Things that had fallen out of favor, but some things we just didn't have a better place for like lights and that big Santa and boxes of plain balls and..... The doll bed and the frame don't belong in that picture. I don't want to have to go through all these boxes. They aren't very fun. These are:

We had to build special shelves to hold the Christmas collection. I've X'd out things not Christmas. 90% of the collection is from the 1960s and earlier. I can't wait to get it all out! Can't wait to share it with you all!

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Oh, my! This is my 100th post! I'm not ready! We'll have to celebrate some other date. Either postpone the celebration or do my birthday or.......something.

So if I don't talk to you all for a few days, Happy Thanksgiving! And Happy Regular Day to the rest of the world!