Oh, I'm so thankful.

For a month now, Mimi has been telling her friends, teachers, neighbors, even total strangers that her cousins were coming for Thanksgiving.  At first, I tried to correct her, saying, "Our friends, Mimi.  Our friends, Libby and Jenna."
But she would correct me, saying "My cousins, Mom.  My cousins, Libby and Jenna."
And it's okay because they feel like cousins.  Sara is my war buddy.  Our friendship was forged in the trenches of teaching junior high.  Even after each of us have moved three times, we've always ended up less than 4 hours apart.  And, in lieu of a Thanksgiving with blood relatives, the Soelbergs are the best possible option.  I have Sara.  Livi has Libby (and believe me, that simple "b" or "v" consonant sound was a constant source of confusion when the girls were teeny.  We still refer to Libby as "Lippy", just for the sake of clarity.)

Mimi has Jenna.

And poor, poor Joe.  He's got John, but the hospital never sleeps (and John occasionally has to), even over Thanksgiving, so his socializing was pretty limited.
We partied hard, until the girls crashed exhausted into bed (and crashed OUT of bed onto the hard wooden floor in the middle of the night.)

 

We ate delicious food, even if I dried out our turkey and made not-so-delicious new-recipe Broccoli Gratin.  Sara's contributions more than made up for it.

And even if the girls couldn't wait for the delicious food and sat down to a snack of Pringles with 45 minutes to go.

And even if my little baby Bella is a serious snack-snatcher.

We took pie to share the resident festivities at the Bradys, and played Beatles Rock Band until we were so sweaty we felt like we'd actually been to a concert.  (Sidenote:  Do you know you can still score 9% playing Rock Band even if you are the bass and you are following the drum part?  Amazing, eh?)
And Sara and I, we decided to make Christmas stockings, which are going to be absolutely darling, thanks to Sara's artistic abilities and my nonstop trolling of craft blogs for ideas.  (Look at us.  Even our sewing machines are exactly the same.)