After a wonderful service at mom's church, we went home to take Bella out for a bit and get changed before going over to Uncle Cephus and Auntie Ann's house. We got there and were spoiled with more gifts. Mom was given a hat, scarf, and gloves from cousin Chris. Funny enough we were just talking about the fact that mom needed new gloves! Then we both got beautiful, wonderfully soft robes from my aunt and uncle. My cousins Karen and Yvonne spoiled me with a very generous gift card. We enjoyed some cheese and crackers, then not long after also enjoyed some fruit with fruit dip. Slowly the family started to arrive. Cousin Chris was already there. Then Uncle John and Aunt Bertsie came. A little later Mike, Kelly, Amy, Amy's four kids (1 girl about 12, and three boys, I think 4, 3, and 1 1/2, who all look very similar:)), Cousin Cephus, and his wife Sally all came. My cousin Karen was already there helping her mom out, and my cousin Yvonne and Uncle Cephus were delivering food to family, and arrived back home later as well. We then enjoyed the main meal...turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, macaroni and cheese, cornbread, collard greens, yams, salad, and lasagna...oh yum! We ate very well, talked, laughed and enjoyed one another while watching the Celtics play. There was disappointment all around when they lost by two points. Dessert was soon brought out, and if you thought the meal was something, that was nothing compared to dessert. My cousin Karen does most of the baking for that, and she definitely went all out this year. There was Lemon Meringue pie (my cousin Chris and my Uncle Cephus's favorite), raspberry pinwheel cookies (my favorite), strawberries cut in fours with cream cheese inside (my other favorite), Baby Ruth bar cookies (my Aunt Bertsie's favorite), shortbread cookies with chocolate drizzled on top, chocolate chip cookies, coconut cake (made by my Auntie Ann, that was always my pappy's favorite), pecan crescent cookies (also my pappy's favorite), gluten free pumpkin cake, pound cake, and German chocolate cake...phew, I think that was it! Can I just say...total yummy fullness!! But be proud of me, I didn't over indulge at all! A little after all this goodness came out, my cousin Derek and his girlfriend came. They are a great looking couple, and she is sweet as can be, and fit in very well with the family! My cousin Cephus Jr. surprised me by mentioning my blog to everyone. He read my blog The Gang's All Here and shared some of it with the family. What a wonderful compliment! We enjoyed some more time just relaxing and talking and watching more basketball. Of course the little boys were quite entertaining! My uncle calls them one bear, two bear and three bear (his Indian names for them). Mom kept wanting just one more cookie, her stomach seems to be a little endless lately. Think I'm over-exaggerating? Just you wait to hear what else I'm going to share. Of course we were told that we needed to take some things home. Of course I had to take some of the raspberry pinwheels home with me. As I was filling my plate, my Uncle Cephus told me to take more, he told me not to stop until he told me to. I kept putting more on the plate and when I looked over at him to see when he was going to tell me to stop....he was.....ASLEEP! Haha, yup, he had started dozing, so I had to give him a hard time telling him he forgot to stop me. Well,we got 3 or 4 plates of food to take home. We had our gifts, our food, said our goodbyes and were on our way. But unbeknownst to mom we weren't quite heading home to her Bella.
After we left our family's house we headed about 15-20 minutes away to visit with another family. I have known this family for years. I had 3 of the 4 kids when they were in third grade. But I had her oldest as well, for music when he was in fourth grade. She has always kept in touch with me and invited me to the kids graduation parties and things. She had asked me a few days ago about coming over. I told her about our family time, and that it would be much later before we could come over. She said it was fine and just wanted us to make it over. So we did. Her other friend that was visiting was just about to leave when we got there. And it wasn't good enough for us to just come visit, she also wanted to feed us as well. She had lasagna, chicken, rice with a tomato-type sauce to go over it, fried plantains, salad, and rolls. So we got a little lasagna, some plantains, and rice and sauce. It was delicious, but I felt that I was probably going to explode soon. Mom ate most of her plate, just left a little lasagna, but she also had a roll. We talked for a little while, and then she told us we each had to have a piece of cheesecake...huh??? .....Uh...ok... We each had a piece, mom ate a few bites of hers and I tried to eat as much of mine as I could, but I had to leave some. When we finally convinced her that we needed to go, she started packing up some food for us to take home. While she was doing that, mom ate the rest of my cheesecake! When we got into the car I was finally able to groan loudly from my discomfort. Mom didn't know why I was so uncomfortable, she said she wasn't full...what?? We finally got home and got comfortable. Once mom had her pj's on, she asked if we were going to have dessert. I ran down the list of all that she had already eaten that day, she was surprised. But she did have another cookie. Oh my...what a day of merriment and fellowship, and fun.....and fullness!
Thank you, Lord, for the wonderful gift of family and friends to celebrate this special day with! Thank you for good food and good fellowship. Thank you for a great day full of great memories!
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