I hope you all had a nice weekend with your families! We had part of our crew (Todd, Paige, Stuart, Jamar) here at home, while another part of our crew (Alex, Mauricio, Bryce) couldn’t make it. It was a little bit of a quiet, bittersweet day for us since we just said goodbye to Chuck two weeks ago. But we were happy to see the kids and have a few days of relaxed togetherness.

We decided to go ahead and gather at Chuck/Pa-Pa’s house as we would have anyway, because first of all, he would have wanted that; and second of all, Thanksgiving was his favorite meal of all time. He looked forward to it every year, he hovered over all the cooking and asked how much longer, and he loved filling his plate with turkey, mushy stuffing (from the bird for him, always!), mashed potatoes, and steaming hot gravy.

It was so nice to cook at Chuck’s. I could honestly feel his presence, almost as if he was sitting in his chair in the living room—and I kept the eating schedule right on target, because Pa-Pa was always the happiest if the food was ready ten minutes early. 😂

Again, almost as if Chuck was there encouraging me, I churned out a top three batch of gravy! It was dark, delicious, giblety, and I still have a little left and am considering heating it up and pouring it over scrambled eggs this morning.