The BBQ before the feast

We spent this last weekend in Arizona for a family TANKsgiving! My sister and brother-in-law are working on opening the first public aquarium in Arizona, a part of the World Wildlife Zoo. They had anticipated the opening to be around Thanksgiving and invited the whole family, and I mean the whole damn family to Arizona to celebrate. After a number of delays and setbacks, the Aquarium is now going to be open to the public on December 20th and the grand opening will be December 29th. Needless to say, everyone was excited about coming down for the pre-opening anyway!

We managed to get 40 people to commit to the extravaganza. And somehow we managed to fit those people inside my sister's 1100 sq foot house for 3 days as it rained in Surprise, AZ! We had a great time and we ate way too much food!

Paul and I drove through the night on Tuesday to arrive at the hotel at 4 am on Wednesday morning. I turned around and woke up at 9 am to help get organized for the expected crowd for that night's BBQ. My folks spent the previous week and a week in October getting all the supplies and renting tables and ordering food. I showed up and put table clothes on the tables, Paul moved all the heavy furniture around for me and saved me from the "fires" in the catering trays! We had burgers and chicken with picnic food sides for our BBQ. People brought bread, wine, beers, and all kinds of sweet goodies to share:

The setup:







Paul having fun:



and more fun...



Once everyone got there, the food consumption began! Yumm-o!