We Hosted 22 Adults, 5 Kids, and a Dog for Thanksgiving

It.  Was.  SO FUN!

My husband took Bruce for a long walk after breakfast in an attempt to deplete some of his bounce and energy.  It worked pretty well, but we still gave him a Benadryl to keep him calm and make him a little less nervous since he hasn't spent a lot of time around large groups of people.  We're actually not sure if he's ever spent time around kids, but he did really well with them and even let our friends toddler use him as a pillow when they both got tired of walking around everybody's legs.

We started cooking (and drinking, let's be honest) around 9:30am, and people started showing up around noon.  Turkey was done ahead of schedule at 2:30pm because everything cooks faster in this tiny oven.  We had plenty of food and in fact have a ton of leftovers.  We went through most of a 14 lb turkey, an 8 lb ham, stuffing, macaroni and cheese, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, gravy, pecan praline sweet potatoes, prosciutto-wrapped asparagus, 5 packages of Hawaiian rolls, crescent rolls, lumpia, a couple of meat and cheese plates with crackers, olives, chips and dip, puff pastry with cranberry and brie, a pumpkin pie, an apple pie, a red velvet cake, a crockpot of mulled wine, and about 3 trash bags full of beer bottles.  I'm sure I'm forgetting something.  We had so much food.  Our kitchen looked like Heaven.

We actually didn't run out of beer and only ran out of mulled wine an hour before everybody started making their exits.  Most importantly, we didn't run out of things to laugh about.  We kept Spades and Cards Against Humanity going throughout the day, and the last 9 of us closed down the night with a super competitive (and hilarious) game of Cranium.  I think our British friends were just entertained watching us celebrate our weird, American holiday.  It was fun to see the roles reversed because usually I'm the one asking what different food is and trying to figure out why we're celebrating.  Ha!

There were only two dog-related issues.  Our neighbor is allergic to dogs, which means Bruce, of course, chose him as a favorite person to rub up against.  And when those same neighbors knocked to come in, our friend opened the door, and Bruce shot out into the front yard where our sweet, little neighbor kid Charlie was waiting to come in - and he's deathly afraid of dogs.  By the time I got outside 2 seconds later, he was down the block hiding and crying hysterically.  We felt TERRIBLE.  Thankfully, they are great people and held onto their sense of humor during it all.  Well, everyone but Charlie, but who can blame him?  Bruce is almost as tall as he is!

At the end of the night, we were bummed to discover that someone had dried their hands a little too vigorously and pulled our towel holder off the bathroom wall, so add that to the list of considerations - something WILL get broken.  No sweat, though.  It's an easy fix to putty it back onto the wall, and if that's the worst thing that happened, I'm comfortable calling our first Thanksgiving a great success!  We made new friends, laughed again at all of the fun things we've done with our old friends, complimented our dog on being such a good boy, and finally locked the door around 10:00pm with a satisfied sigh.  We went to bed with full bellies and happy memories.  Can't wait to do it all again next year.