Happy Birthday, Dad! and Happy Thanksgiving!

Today is Dad's 92nd birthday! He celebrated by sleeping. Since early this year he has been sleeping more and more. But once he is awake, he is very alert and normal. He and the cats have the same sleeping schedule.

I made the Fluffy Dinner Rolls last night; today I made 2 pumpkin pies and baked the salmon. For both of them I used recipes from the America's Kitchen Cookbook. Here are the pies, made with freshly grated ginger; I got several comments from the ginger-lovers tonight. The recipe said it made enough of the pumpkin custard for 1 pie, not, its really enough for two 9" pies.



As we got ready to leave I had the things we were taking wrapped but sitting on the table. Mom asked what each one was. Then went around asking about them again. And again. ... Her short term memory was the shortest I have ever seen it! I cut her off after the 4th round and said we needed to pack up the car and get on the road.  

Lori always had the tables decorated with a theme for the evening, tonight it was pumpkins. The scented candles are Curtis' contribution to the evening. One of the candles was Maple Pumpkin and the other was Pumpkin Pie.



The dinner was primarily the work of Lori and her sister Jenny. I contributed salmon, dinner rolls, and a pumpkin pie. Shaun made a pot roast. Here's the spread.

Clockwise from upper left: salmon, pot roast, salad, macaroni salad, dinner rolls, turkey, gravy, ham, mashed potatoes, ambrosia, pumpkin pie, & fruit salad.

After dinner some of us did karaoke. Some people really got in to it. This system apparently rates you on a scale up to 100, it also provides the musical notation of the song so you know how long to hold the notes. Guess who really got in to it.

L to R: Gavin, Gordon, Anita, Lori, Brent.

Happy Birthday also to Lani!