November plans

Today has been fair....the normal weather seems to have returned, lows overnight were in the mid 60's and our highs have been in the upper 70's...I think it managed to hit about 78 degrees earlier today.

The boys both came out late in the afternoon, hubby was working on his truck getting the engine dropped back in so his brother could borrow our engine hoist. As usual, it seems to have been a 'bust' day for getting the younger one to work on his own junk sitting out back. I did let him know that I want it out of my yard and there will not be any future projects done by them in our yard.

My sister in-law called about the menu plans for Thanksgiving...the camping trip portion is cancelled. While we were talking, she was mentioning why they pick certain areas for this annual event. Seems it has to do with the family members who live in North Florida and trying to make things easier for them. That's all fine and dandy, but if she really thought about it, she'd realise that none of them give two hoots about making things easy for anyone else. None of the ones in that area think about anyone but themselves when it comes to making plans for holidays. Its fine for all of us down in this area to make the two hour trip, one way, to their home for holiday gatherings...but god forbid we should request them to make the same trip...doesn't seem right to me. Her reasoning was that none here have the 'house' large enough for all the family...well, maybe my 'house' isn't big enough, but we sure have the property that is large enough for forty plus people. None of the ones in North Florida have a house that large either, and only one has a yard of any size, but no where near the size of ours.

I told hubby the other week that he should suggest it for next year's Thanksgiving. We could throw an awning up in case of bad weather...wouldn't be any worse than being at the campsite area. We have made the 'mandatory' trip yearly to their houses for Christmas dinners every year. Personally, I'm to the point where I could care less whether I see these people or not. If they think they are too good to come to their brother's house for any reason, well, I can play that card myself...the highway runs both ways and their gas isn't any more expensive than ours.

My dinner contribution is usually a ham and a dessert...my sister in-law likes my hams. This year, one of the sisters requested to make a ham. Not a problem, there will be two deep fried turkeys, her ham and I offered to smoke a turkey and make applecrisp. My sister in-law had asked me about making an apple dish and thought the applecrisp sounded good. The extra turkey was accepted also. We discussed what out of the camping gear might be needed since we'll be preparing everything outside once we get to the site. Most things will already be cooked, but knowing how silly some of this family can be, we plan to carry the campstoves and an extra table. The final count isn't in as yet, but based on our 'normal' crowd, we're looking at close to fifty people showing up....one of the sisters brought an extra twenty people last year, without warning. This almost made my SIL catch a healthy attitude, the only saving grace was the girl made sure to bring extra food. It isn't that they weren't welcome, its just that SIL wants to make sure we have enough food on hand for everyone. Can't blame her for that, I'm not much into those kinds of surprises either...not to mention that the area we were in was tight to begin with and all the extra people had everyone elbow to elbow.

Ahhh, such is life with big families....