Ah, the holidays.

So we're having Thanksgiving here. Should be around 12 adults and 6 children (ages 7.5, 7.5, 5, 3.5, nearly 3, and 2.5).

The house is mostly clean, just a bit of dusting and last minute tidying to do. Sometime in the next 24 hours the following will take place (in semi-chronological order):

Baking of two pumpkin and two apple crumb pies, from scratch including crust, by yours truly (okay, the pumpkin is in a can, but other than that)
Brining, stuffing and roasting of Da Bird
GRAVY! Delicious, delicious gravy.
Peeling, cutting, boiling, mashing of Da Spuds
Preparation of Ye Olde Holy Green Bean Casserole (yes the mushroom soup and french fried onion kind and I LIKE IT!!)
Saucing of the cranberries
The Ceremonial Spurning of the Relish Tray*
Filling of Relish Tray with M&M's and Kisses
Placing Relish Tray out of reach of six children under the age of 8
Setting tables
Eating
Groaning/discreetly unbuttoning pants/surreptitious napping
Enduring of houseful of in-laws
Endgame cleaning of kitchen
Collapsing from exhaustion

*The Ceremonial Spurning of the Relish Tray
(This is from a blog entry of two years ago, about my mother-in-law. I have excerpted it here because the original post is very long and nobody should have to wade through it.)

"The final straw for me was when she spurned my relish tray. That's right: she spurned my relish tray. She had insisted on bringing the pickles and dilly beans and olives, and you know it's much easier to dodge a charging rhino than to stand your ground, so we concurred. But she also brought the World's Ugliest Relish Tray to put it all in, a sort of dull putty colored swoopy thing. We showed her the really very pretty, if slightly smaller, ceramic one given to me by a friend but she scoffed -- and this was the first time I can recall consciously identifying a scoff on the fly, so you can see why I'm so eager to blog it -- and said it wouldn't hold anything."

The offspring stirs, so it looks like my day has begun. Good luck and Happy Thanksgiving, Internets!