Today our oldest turns six years old! We really cannot believe it. Five is such a huge year, the first year that I really remember concretely from my own childhood. Sure, I have memories from three and four, but mostly they are spotty and fuzzy. Five is so iconic. The year that school starts (for most people), for example. That Liesl is no longer five and all of those memories and events for her from that age are now over is unbelievable. How did our little girl get so old? Liesl was still awake at midnight last night so I ran downstairs and wished her a happy birthday before we sent her off to bed.
Liesl and Luciana both love snow and Peoria, NY is completely covered in snow this morning. Not snow that will cause driving problems, but enough that everything is covered in it. This is what people wish that Christmas would look like.
Liesl got me up at six this morning, she needed me to escort her upstairs to get tissues. She doesn’t like walking around grandpa’s house alone at night in the dark. She went right back to bed and back to sleep after that. I did not. I ended up laying awake for an hour and a half before deciding to get up and get started. Dominica was up at a quarter after eight to start cooking.
The morning was spent getting ready for the festivities. Dominica was making baked ziti for everyone and that took much of the morning. The gang was due to arrive around eleven thirty.
We had a total of seventeen people come for Thanksgiving dinner today. It was a very long day, the crowd was here from about eleven thirty until seven in the evening. And nearly everyone was here the whole time too. We had a really good time, it was a lot of fun. The girls had a blast. They had a bunch of twenty-somethings to play with them all day too which they thought was just awesome. So they were really worn out by the end of the day.
At nine, Art and Danielle stopped up and picked Dominica and I up and we drove up to Rochester to go to the old Nick Tahou’s (now Steve T’s) on Lyell Avenue. This is the nineteenth year (1996 was the first year of the tradition) of our gang getting together there right at 10PM as they open up after being closed for Thanksgiving. We are always nearly everyone there. Very few people think of going there at that time.
We had an amazing thirteen people come this year. Jeff Simpson and two of his cousins arrived first and Joe Howlett was waiting in his truck when the four of us got there. Nate and Tammy came up bringing his cousin and a friend and Tess came for the first time too. It was a huge turnout. Bob was thinking of coming out from Syracuse but with the bad weather it just was not worth the long drive.
It was great being back. We had a great time and everyone stayed until after midnight. The food was awesome too. It has been many years since I have had a garbage plate. I love this tradition. It is so much fun. Dominica always hates the idea but loves it when we actually go. She was very happy that we went too. Maybe now we can get back into the swing of this. This is our first time making it back since Liesl was born! It was great seeing everyone again too.
It was just after one when we got back to the house. Dad was still awake. The girls had been pretty rambunctious and did not actually go to bed until a quarter after eleven! We are not happy with them. But their internal clocks probably made getting to sleep as early as we had put them to bed pretty hard. They never go to bed before eleven and rarely before midnight.