Bob and I drove over the river and through the woods (sort of) on Thanksgiving, heading south towards Lake Park (IA) with a stop in Jackson(MN) along the way. Have you ever driven anywhere on Thanksgiving or Christmas? It's really hard to find something to eat on the way! All we wanted was a snack of some kind to tide us over to the real food, but we found fast food places closed at 11 so we ended up getting a cookie and a muffin and coffee at a gas station! We had not thought that we would be able to join the Hansen dinner but when the Herbert dinner got moved till later, we decided to swing by Jean's house to say hi to the family there. Arrived just as the turkey was being passed and Jean had saved 2 seats for us, how lucky can we get!? I think there were 14 people there, and we ate rather conservatively (well, at least I did!) and had a good, although brief visit. Then it was another 30 or so miles to Lake Park to my parents house where the turkey was roasting on the grill and the table was set. Jarry, my brother, likes to grill the turkey over charcoal, so he was in charge of that and my mom had prepared the rest. We are a smaller group, there were 8 of us around the table. It was a delicious dinner.
My mom likes to work on hand quilting during the winter, so she has started on this project.
It is an old quilt top of unknown origin, probably something a great grandma might have pieced together. It is feedsack fabrics and just randomly placed squares and rectangles of great variety. I did a little bit of cleaning and patching on it and now she has it on the frame. We decided to just use a muslin backing and will probably bind it with a solid color.
And the lovely day ended with this colorful sunset over Silver Lake.
The fun continued throughout the weekend with special attention for my mom's 80th birthday the day after Thanksgiving!
She really doesn't look 80 at all! She's not sure when this was taken, but she looks lovely in her good dress (which I am sure she sewed for herself). This looks like the yard at our farmhouse, complete with the fuel oil barrel in the background. We drove out to the farmhouse on Friday, it is not habitable anymore so stands empty and sad.
So it was a busy and fun weekend, catching up on a lot of family news and happenings. And just a few weeks until we get to do it again for Christmas! We are lucky that we are within driving distance of our family homes and that many of the relatives still live in the area. They are a good bunch!
2 comments:
I wish I could have been there.
I think you were there in spirit...
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