A Very Raab Thanksgiving

What a fun-filled five days we had!  Wednesday morning I was up at five to pack up the car and bring a bed to New York.  That’s right…a bed.  My brother and Anna and Preston and I were going to all sleep at Katie and Steve’s.  They have one guest bedroom and I totally called it (although Chris will argue he did).  The way to solve-Kim brings the blow up queen bed to New York.  This is no ordinary bed.  No, no no.  My father bought the blow up bed that had a BED FRAME attached.  It’s about 50 pounds and I had to get it down 35 stairs and into my car.  This sparked a text war between Chris and myself the day before, a lot of choice words were exchanged until my father said he’d buy a new one, which annoyed me more so I just bought the bed.  And I got the guestroom. SCORE!  Wednesday we spent preparing the meal with Katie.  here she is getting the sausage meat for the stuffing!

After that it was Italian heroes and a lot of laughs.  Then Chris landed, demanded a pizza and we rolled out the red carpet and played Pachabel’s Canon for our youngest sibling who by the way was chauffeured by car service to my sister’s (love you Pher). Next morning was the parade!  I was so excited because the weather was not predicted to be nice.  Thankfully although frigid, (*read a tolerable 41 but still), the rain held off.  Unlike last year when we were about 20 rows back two very nice guys let the children in front of them right in the front row.  Our neighbors were down from Virginia so I corralled the four boys and with help from the NYPD they all sat front row center on 65th and CPW!  The cop even stopped a clown at the beginning of the parade to hand Pres a balloon.  He and I share a brain because he politely declined-I was thinking one of us would be holding that balloon the whole parade.  Of course once the clown passed he wanted the balloon.  The performers all threw confetti at the kids.  It was pretty awesome to be front row center.

After the parade was BAGELS!  Yum.  I love you 72nd Street Bagels.

Pres slept the whole way home and a good hour and half after we got home.

Here are some pics from the day.  Katie and Steve were the host and hostess with the mostess!  The meal was delicious and by far the best turkey I ever have eaten at Thanksgiving.  it was amazing for their first official holiday! Love you guys!  And of course, no Raab Thanksgiving is comp0lte without enough dessert to feed an army.  it was my favorite tradition.  My mother and I used to bake all day Wednesday and all of us would have friends over for dessert.  The house would rock well into the night.  Yum. 

I always take a picture of my dad basting.  And what day is complete without a little Raab sibling faces?

Even Steve gets into the action:

Happy Birthday Pher!

Preston asked everyone what they were thankful for (As Steve said, Anna was thankful for three football games on that day. *wink) and he also led me in Grace.  It was a wonderful Thanksgiving.  Stay tuned for the rest of our weekend.