Thanksgiving Day

Sorry for the extreme delay on posting. I have been a bit preoccupied! I am finally getting around to updating everyone on the Thanksgiving week festivities. Tuesday Cami and Matt called asking what our holiday plans were since their plans had completely fallen through. All of their friends ending up getting cheap, last minute plane tickets home. So calls and arrangements were made for them to come with Jill and me to Philly. Wednesday I left work early and headed to Baltimore. Matt and Cami left Richmond at 2:00PM and also headed to Baltimore. I arrived after 2 1/2 hours of fun-filled holiday traffic. Jill and I went to the store (3 times) and made two pecan pies from two different recipes. Matt and Cami arrived after 6 1/2 hours of traffic! I'm glad we broke up the trip into two segments. We all chilled in front of the TV and ate pizza while we tried to convince ourselves that tomorrow's traffic would not be as bad. Thanksgiving this year was spent in Royersford, PA (outside of Philadelphia) at Jill's parent's house. We took the back country roads in order to avoid I95 and hopefully the traffic. It worked perfectly. No traffic and a beautiful drive. Several times I wanted to stop and take pictures but the camera was buried in the back seat. After 3 missed opportunities I finally had to stop and take a picture of this very patriotic thing. I'm not sure what to even say about it. Unfortunately I did not get any other camera moments for the rest of the drive. Oh well. Jill's sister Linda cooked the entire meal for everyone. She included some traditional Pennsylvania Dutch recipes such as Potato Stuffing and Shoe Fly Pie. She did an great job and would not let most of us help her out (Toby, her husband, was not let off the hook so easily!) We waited out our time before the feast by playing a lot Ping Pong and keeping the kids entertained. Ryan, Jake and Cade kept us all busy. Ryan got into the holiday spirit by creating a headband complete with colored feathers. The other boys were not as interested in getting dressed up for the occasion. Nate and Sara also came up from Baltimore which brought the total number of hungry mouths to 16. The food was fabulous and company wasn't too bad either! Later, birthday's were celebrated, lot's of lounging was enjoyed, and desert was consumed. The largest disappointment this year were my horrible pecan pies. I tried to sell them as Pecan Toffee Pies but that didn't work either. I tried two new recipes one with molasses that I thought was going to be a hit. Making pecan pies is easy. Cooking them correctly is a pure art form. My artwork sucked this year. At the appointed cooking time the centers were extremely runny. After 15-20 more minutes the centers were still tacky but I pulled them out anyway. As they cooled, the pies got harder and denser by the second. We transported the pies stacked one on top of the other! Not a good sign! The flavor was actually very good but he portion that was actually editable had to be scraped out of the center of each piece. The last time I made pecan pies I had to over cook them too but they turned out really good. I will have to try these recipes again. I can't let them smear my good name this way. Thanks to whole Kneeland Clan for your hospitality. It was a great celebration and honestly the best Thanksgiving Day of the last 10 years for me. Here are the rest of the pictures.