What the . . . Heck?!!!!

For a few weeks, I had been keeping something from Jeffery. . . though I did share the excitement with a few other people (I had to tell someone!) I was on assignment, shall we say, to not let Jeff in on what was happening.  So it went, that I and my little family worked overtime: pulling up weeds, cleaning up the garden, organizing bedrooms, basically sprucing the place up a bit.  All in preparation for Thanksgiving, (insert Jeff wondering why I was working so hard at getting things organized here?).  Two nights before Turkey day, I picked up a family movie, and we were all together on the couch, actually watching it together, this doesn't happen very often at all, and I was enjoying the moment. . . then there was a phone call . . . from Jeff's mom, asking if we had received the package she sent yet?  It might be on the front door, since she sent it FedEx instead of through the postal service.  Well, let me go check says Jeffery.  He opened the door and . . ."what the . . . Heck?!!" [those were my exact words] there standing on our front porch were his lovely mother, father, and little brother [I honestly had no idea of what was going on. I mean Kathleen did a great job of not letting any of it slip, and the way I saw it Kathleen was just cleaning like she always does].  Now that was real surprise on his face, and that's hard to do! This man of mine is a bit difficult to surprise, and while there were a few times I thought I might have slipped up a bit, he didn't seem to have any idea they would be joining us.  Saweet!

Melinda, Taylor, Jackson and Abigail were able to come down also, so we had the majority of the Tessem's at our house for the Holiday, Woot woot! And just in case you were wondering, they had no idea the Grandparents were going to be at our house either until they walked in Thanksgiving day and saw them in our living room [I had the job of getting them  in to see my parents as soon as they got here, which ended up seeming to my sister that I didn't want to talk to her and just wanted to herd her in to see our other "guests"].  Completely classic! Nicely done Bestemor! Although, I must admit, I was about to explode with holding the secret in, and was very relieved to finally not have to worry about it anymore!

We had fun preparing the Pies [my instructions to the girls in making the graham cracker crusts was to "beat the crap out of it"-is that bad?] :

Seeing sites around town [some of these were from windows at Macy's in NY on previous years]:

This is the "underground" in case you haven't ever seen it before . . . funny how there was a sign telling us it was there, nothing keeping us out, and then a security guard finding us playing games and letting us know we were not supposed to be down there, what?  Seriously?  Why have a sign letting us know it was there, inviting us to explore, and then NOT wanting us to do so? And not just a sign but a whole advertising campaign on local radio stations inviting people to come down and visit. I swear, I must have heard on NPR about 30 times during the previous week about the underground at ATC, followed by the commercial about the new ancho steak chili with cornbread on top at Panera. Now I am wondering if that is real too. I bet if I go and order that at Panera they will yell at me and tell me that food isn't for me to eat.

Eating lots of scrumptious food:

Pies (of course) although we only made six this year [can you tell which one is the avocado? I wasn't going to make it this year, but the girls both wanted it. I guess we have a tradition!]:

And finding moments to enjoy each other's company!

Abigail could really work the camera, such a DOLL!

LOVE that Jackson and Grace were able to play and enjoy each others' company!

That is my old man, old swivel hips himself!

 And then I got to kiss the most beautiful girl in the world...

Such a fun surprise!  So glad that everyone could make it :) It was awesome to have them all here. And to have the surprise too. Now, how am I going to get Kath back?