It all started with a pancake recipe....

The holidays are over, but I'm not over them. hahah I had a great time with all my family in town. Megan arrived December 24th, Martha and Tony on the 26th,Ian and Tara on the 31st, Ellen, Erik and Anna on the 1st and Liz, Jon and Meredith on the 2nd. For a week or two it was like a party on the go wherever we went....at least for me.
I had suggested to my brother Mark that we plan to have a brunch on New Year's Day at his house. Almost everyone would be in town by then and I had a great pancake recipe I wanted to share with everyone. Well...Mark took the suggestion and ran with it.

He had two griddles ready for pancakes and bacon, sausage, eggs,assorted cheese, tomatoes, peppers, etc, fresh orange juice, champagne for mimosas, fruit, assorted breads and muffins  for toasting, and special Gluten free pancake mix for those who needed it. He also had everything neatly lined up and ready to go.

Most of us got there around 10:00am...the Burton-Bitterbaum crew arrived a short time later.(..straight from the airport!) We all enjoyed the beautiful (a little HOT) day. We played ping pong,

took pictures, watched football bowl games on TV and just enjoyed the morning/early afternoon.

Mark joked around with the chef hats...and when Tony stepped in to whip up one of his delicious omelets...he put one on too. (mostly so we could take their picture...hahaha)

check out that omelet!

We all sat around and laughed and talked. Made final plans for John's birthday party the next night. We all  also picked up pictures/papers Mark had sorted through and organized for all of us. Because he has been living in the house...we never had to settle up all the furnishings, etc still there. He has been slowly organizing things and is distributing them to the rest of us. We looked through my mother's jewelry, including pins, watches etc that belonged to her brothers and her parents. It was fun looking at everything and remembering stories about the different pieces of jewelry...who had given them to my mother, why, etc. We really appreciated all the time Mark had put in to sorting through it all for the rest of us. That day we looked it over...but we didn't take anything just yet...we wanted to wait for Elizabeth to get there.
It was a nice day...it seemed like everyone was having a good time...at least I hope so. I enjoyed being with all my family and assorted in-laws. It was a good way to start off 2016.
I never did hear if people liked the pancakes...but at the end of the day they were almost all gone...so I think they did. We topped them off with some real maple syrup some Mark had bought on a work trip to Ohio (side trip to nearby farm country) and a bottle of aptly named "Burton's Farm" fresh Maple syrup I got at the Farmer's Market on my trip to Chicago this past June.