For the beauty of the earth... (Ray bursts into song...)

Cool, Arbi.  I imagine last Thanksgiving at your place was pretty, um, exciting!

My favorite part of the meal today:  Stuffing.  Made from scratch and cooked in the bird.  Only way to do it.

If I ever shoot my own bird, I'm gonna use this: http://www.seasonshot.com/

-- Edited by Roper at 21:27, 2006-11-23

Well, since last year the 23rd was on the day before Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving was actually quite calm and peaceful compared to the events leading up to it.

Well, in what turned out to be a salvaged Thanksgiving holiday with a small bird and about 1/2 the trimmings (long story short, we had been on for hosting my family this year and were expecting over 20 at the house, but due to sickness in our family and in one of my sisters family the day or two before, we called it off and all the Ohio-based extended Cat Herders stayed at their respective domiciles and also salvaged small Thanksgiving feasts...), the best thing was having all the kids home and relatively healthy (oldest daughter and youngest son still were in the after effects of some bug, which oldest son and wife are now starting to show symptoms for), a close second to that was having youngest son (4 yr old) not ask but announce he was going to say the blessing when we all sat down had the food on the table. And ask the blessing he did. He said it all without any help, loud enough to where we could hear, and it was long, not your typical 4 year old "Deer Hevnly Fader, fankful for dis fud, fankful for my fambly, bless da fud. Im name Jees Kreis... A Man" He went on for like nearly a minute it seemed. Don't remember if he realy blessed the food or not, but it was nearly enough to bring tears to Cat and Mrs. Cat who have at times had to nearly twist his arm to say prayers... he did it all by himself without being asked.