Thanksgiving in Three Part Harmony

I have finished my Thanksgiving Services in the Parish just this last Sunday. The very interesting thing about Thanksgiving in a six point parish is that the original pairs still invite the other church to their service and expect the other one to close that day (In faint but eternal hope that the other congregation will actually respond to their invitation to attend the service). This leads to three Thanksgiving Services for me as the associate priest in this parish.

The first of these occurred on October 4, the weekend prior to Thanksgiving; a service that St. John's in the Woods at Aughrim calls Harvest Home. The decorations are always right out of the fields and gardens and, as this year I celebrated a wedding there the day before, the ladies of the church went all out for both the bride and the Sunday service. (I do hope to get a picture of the church and add it in as it was exceptionally lovely.) Their historically companion church, St. Matthew's in Florence held their service last weekend.

The actual weekend of Thanksgiving, I was posted at Christ Church, Dresden, and St. Stephen's, Thamesville. It is almost a tradition that I will be late going from the services in Dresden to St. Thomas -- even though the distance is quite 'doable' without doing the 'clergy clip'. But the folks at Dresden are a sociable lot and always have coffee and tasty things following the service. I shake hands with everyone as they go down stairs and listen for potential concerns and then move down to grab a coffee to go (in my 'Timmies' mug.) As a result, I am generally about 10 minutes late for the next service. The wonder woman of the parish, who refuses to be an official lay reader, faithfully starts the service for me, handing it off to me after I get there generally during the hymn of praise or the Gloria. Lunch at "Mary's" usually follows the service with three or four of the five or six present showing up. This means getting home about two.
Not a problem generally, but on Thanksgiving Sunday, (11 October) I was having ten for our family dinner and logistics were pretty interesting.