Thanksgiving aftermath

We had our Thanksgiving yesterday.  Mary Susannah and I cooked and cleaned for two days, and had a lot of fun doing it.  We had a total of 19 people for dinner.  My oldest grandson even brought a date, which REALLY made me feel old!  Three grandchildren spent the night.

So today, the real Thanksgiving day, was a lot quieter.  The house was clean and our two fridges were bursting with left overs, which meant I basically had the day off - if you count a day with eight children in the house a day off.

So here's how the aftermath of Thanksgiving went for a mom of many children:

First off, we did NOT eat the goose.  However, when the goose attacked grandson Mikey's knee, grandson Mikey got mad and got the goose and put him in jail, where he remains tonight.  So far, no one has offered to bail him out:

So even though the goose is happy to live another day, Uncle Tommy did not fair so well after a slumber party with ten year old nephew Mikey and eight year old nephew Beetle, plus six year old brother Luke.  They kept him up until after eleven last night, then got him up at 6:30 this morning.  This face is what I saw a LOT today:

Now is that pitiful, or what?  He has spent a lot of time in my lap today letting me rock him, though, which I always enjoy.

And he perked up quickly when he found the bag of candy I hid (but not too well, obviously) on the kitchen cabinet.  Let me assure you, this stuff is NOT on the Feingold diet, although it WAS on sale at the Dollar Store for thirty cents a bag, and I DID have a lot of kids over last night...

So I somehow talked him into saving it for lunch, then I let HIM pass it out, which went over just great!

That Dr. Pepper isn't on his diet, either, but he had Sierra Mist, which is!

All that left over turkey, and all I could think about was soup.  So I got out some of the left overs, and mixed it with Aunt Alice's gravy:

Then I got half the left overs out of the fridge, even the macaroni and cheese:

Mixed that all together, added salt and pepper and brown sugar, and made soup:

HOWEVER...

Mary Susannah and granddaughter Chloe decided to make a nice fancy table again with left overs, it was Thanksgiving after all.  By the time they were done, my soup looked pretty paltry, and I think I was the only one who ate any of it:

Yeah, we are a motley bunch, and that's Tommy's "picture" smile - he drops his jaw and shows his bottom teeth.  He really was happy at this point, because he knew that candy was coming!  And Angel-Leah behind him...well...I'll blame it on all those sweets we had last night...

Luke has become a bottomless pit.

And since Thanksgiving is all about eating, after all, I indulged Angel-Leah's request that all she wanted for dinner was olive balls.  Her big sister Rachael brought them to the dinner last night, but she didn't bring near enough, Angel-Leah says.  So I made olive balls especially for her:

Although Tommy likes them too:

Right in the middle of chowing those down, someone knocked on the locked door.  Angel-Leah looked and saw it was her brother Spencer, and she yelled, "Don't let him in!!  He'll eat all the olive balls!!"  Poor Spencer!  He had come over because he thought he might have broken his finger at volleyball:

We aren't sure, we doctored it and we'll wait a bit, probably it's just jammed.  He "set" it himself, which means he's a lot braver than me, who screams "Don't touch me!!"  whenever I break one of my toes, which seems pretty often since I refuse to wear shoes...

And I don't think he ate any of the olive balls!