another family gathering that did not result in fisticuffs! go, us!

Normally, family dinners make most people cringe and try to come up with brilliant excuses as to why they have to miss out. And I have to admit, that in the past the thought of a dinner with all family present was enough to make my blood pressure rise and migraine start a week earlier.Tonight was nothing like that. Ok, so I already had the migraine, but that had nothing to do with the family gathering! It has everything to do with hormones and weather changes. (Really!) Actually during dinner, the migraine kindly dimmed to a dull roar and I was able to move my head normally without feeling like throwing up everywhere. Thank goodness. Though my family? All parents, siblings, nieces? LOUD. Louder than normal due to my head. But still, fun.We had a great dinner, lots of laughs and though there were a couple of minor high-ish stress moments, nothing got out of hand and we all got a long. And I really DO love my family, all of them. Most all of the time. ;)It was also my father-in-law's birthday today! (And their new pup! But he stayed home.) So we put candles in the homemade pumpkin pie my sister made.

(L-R: Mother-in-law, Father-in-law, Daddy)

I didn't have any of that pie. I had my gluten-free, um, "pie". The bright side was that my sister's homemade ice cream was FANTASTIC and it made the pie taste good. So she left me some so that I could eat the rest of my pie. Heh.

Happy birthday, Pa!!

(You can't see, but he IS wearing his party hat, too. We all wore them and I should have gotten a photo of us all. Oh, well. I was busy being all domestic and crap.)Even Annie got in on the birthday festivities!

Did you say PIE? Can I have some? Huh? I'm FESTIVE DAMNIT!! PIE!!

We got Pa a ton of old Western movie DVDs (one is a box set of 50 movies on 12 discs. My mother-in-law hates us right now) because he just got a new TV.So in all, the evening wasn't bad. I had a good time and though we were one less person again this year, it was a good feeling having all this family around. Doing it this way seems to be the best way, we are all included and we have the space (though with the piano in the room now it was a little tighter than last year). I wonder if this is our new tradition?Also this week - we went to Costco and bought Annie the exact same bed she was lying on at my in-laws' place the last time we were there. It's a huge bed and was only $24, and it's filled with cedar chips and smells really good. And since she's all old and lumpy (poor thing) we thought, eh, why not? So this is what happened:That would be Jinx on the bed and Annie on the floor, half in the foyer. She won't go on it. And if she does, she puts her two front paws on it and the rest of her is on the floor. Jinx does smell all nice and cedary now though.Oh, dogs. You gotta love 'em.

What??