Thanksgiving & more

This year we had lots of family come over for Thanksgiving. Gordon's brother, Ken, and his family came in on Monday. They spent the week sightseeing, first visiting Truchard winery in Napa. I understand that even Aidan walked out with a bottle of wine! The next day there was shopping and sightseeing in San Francisco. We followed up that busy day with dinner at the Beach Chalet on the Great Highway in San Francisco. It was too dark by the time we ate to actually see the view. I think most of Wednesday was consumed with food preparation, well not by me of course, but there was a lot of food to be made as we were also joined for Thanksgiving by my sister Amanda and her family and Gordon's cousin Kent and his family.

Gordon, Dara and Emily did most of the work in the kitchen on Thursday, joined a little later by Kent and Tim, Amanda's husband. Before dinner we snacked on ham & cheese pinwheels as well as deep-fried portobellos, which all go well with the vast amounts of sparkling wine that was consumed. Dinner was served at about four - turkey (of course), a rib roast, duck, pumpkin bread stuffing, andouille sausage stuffing, green been casserole, corn casserole, mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes and salad. That's it I think! Dessert was pumpkin pie, apple pie, chocolate cake and pecan pie. We followed up dinner by energetically watching ASU lose to USC.

Friday night Gordon and I went to my friend Patricia's fiftieth birthday party, which was actually a surprise party. We started out at 6 degrees in Albany, where we had dinner - there was a lot of food this weekend - and then we headed out to a club in Oakland called the Easy club. There was lots of dancing and drinking. We stayed out late - you can probably tell from the pictures that the next day I was at least low-energy, or maybe hungover. But it was a great party!