Thwarted plans, Thankful outcome...

Thanksgivng Day was wonderful! My in-law's are like the Waltons. :-) We eat great food (who doesn't?!?!) and play games and sing etc. I love it! This year we went headlong into the games! First we played charades which is always a crowd pleaser because of some of the hilarious antics that bubble out. This year we noted that my mother in-law is completely incapable of NOT whispering when she's communicating the opening clues like "movie", "three words", "first word", "two syllables". She had us in hysterics but really couldn't help herself!

Then we moved on to a game called "The metaphor game" which was introduced by a teenage boy and I'm pretty sure that all of the adults decided to give it a shot for his sake but didn't have a lot of faith in its success. It turned out to be a lot of fun!

It's played by having one person leave the room and the group selects one person in the room. When "it" returns, he or she must ask metaphor questions to determine who the group selected. At one point, we selected my 21 year old step-son J and A's cousin (mother of the teen boy) was "it". She asked questions like "If this person was a tree, what kind of tree would they be?" "If this person was a ice cream flavor, what flavor would they be?" and so on. The group members have to answer in a way that resembles the person but doesn't give it away. Eventually "it" has to try to guess who the metaphors are describing. So... When J was the group pick, H asked "If this person was a smell, what smell would they be?" Since J has long had a reputation for horrific smelling feet, the adults in the room erupted in laughter. He, his grandparents (who often do his laundry for him), his father and I were the ones who could NOT pull it together. We must have laughed for five minutes solid! It was a lot of fun!

Anyway... The next day we were supposed to install a couple of windows and then head to see my family in CT. Unfortunately the installation of the second window extended much later than we had anticipated so we pulled the plug on the trip in favor of taking the pressure off the project and giving ourselves some breathing room to get some things done around the house. 

And that's what we did! We finished the last of three new window installations plus all of the siding shingling and weather-proofing necessary. Then we tackled our huge stained glass window at the top of the stairs which had some major rot along the exterior sill. Of course it took longer than we anticipated and required yet ANOTHER trip to Home Depot (five total for these little projects...). But, in the end, we finished all of the windows and the only thing left is to rebuild the interior trim for each new window. But that doesn't require a lack of precipitation or wearing a headlamp (yep.... That's how A wrapped up each evening of projects). 

And... When A didn't need me to run the chop saw or run up and down the stairs for tools and materials or clean up debris, I stacked firewood. Lots and lots of firewood. We've got more to do but I got a good jump on it!

It didn't turn out to be the weekend we planned with visiting family in CT but it did turn out to be the weekend we needed!