Happy Thanks-Christmas!

It was our turn to have the children celebrate Thanksgiving with us this year as they had celebrated Christmas with us last year. All's fair, etc., etc. So here's how the scheduling went:
Carynn, Jamie and Ty live in town so no problem
Melinda and Landan live in town so no problem
Lynette and boyfriend Sam took off work so no problem
Bret and Laura had Thanksgiving off so no problem

So with so many no problems-how did it all work? Well, becyond the plans made there is the actual reality. So this is how it REALLY worked:
Bret and Laura both had to work on Black Friday so that meant that it wasn't worth it for them to drive 5 hours on Wednesday night (or Thursday morning) to celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday and then go back Thursday night so we opted to do Thanksgiving on Saturday instead of Friday.
Lynette and Sam decided that since Bret and Laura weren't coming over until Saturday, that they'd drive over Friday afternoon/evening and therefore spent Thanksgiving itself with friends.
Since we weren't going to do Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving, Melinda and Landan had Thanksgiving dinner with Landan's parents.
Michael and I joined Carynn, Jamie and Ty for an "alternative" Thanksgiving dinner on Thanksgiving. We had cornish game hens, rice pilaf, asparagus with hollandaise sauce and yummy pumpkin cheesecake for dessert.

So Saturday we had our combined Thanks-Christmas. (We'd already decided that we'd do our Christmas gift exchange over Thanksgiving. Here was the schedule:
Friday night: Lynette, Sam and doggies Sammy and Daisey arrive
Early Saturday afternoon: Bret and Laura arrive
3:00 PM All are at our home for family pictures. Photo session wasn't very long as Ty's patience wasn't very long.
4:15 PM Traditional Thanksgiving dinner with everyone helping to either cook, set up, clean up or eat!
5:30 PM Decorating the Christmas tree
6:00 PM Opening Christmas gifts-We started with Ty's gifts as his bedtime is early.
7:00 PM (or son) Time for Ty to go to bed, we finish opening gifts.
Later on-We all enjoyed pumpkin pie or cheesecake, watching movies (UP and Cars), I was the recipient of a pedicure (Bliss!)Bret helped Michael on his computer and in general we were ALL in the same place, at the same time for about 12 plus hours.

It was short, it was sweet, but it was great! (It's also "weird" to be done with Christmas shopping so early. I kind of like it. It totally turns the focus to other things. Perhaps we should do this every year!

Happy Thanks-Christmas to all!

NS