Thanksgiving Recap

Thanksgiving morning we hit the ground running. We spent 8 full hours in the kitchen with the oven on. This was the first year that we have done Thanksgiving all by ourselves, but we decided to make it every bit as much of a holiday as it would've been had our numbers been greater.

The problem with doing Thanksgiving alone is that you have to do all the cooking. I love to cook but it took so much longer than I thought it would. Plus, I had never done a turkey. I don't like turkey very much and I don't like any food that looks too much like a living animal (have I mentioned that I was a vegetarian for 6 years?), but I decided that I needed to learn to put together a proper Thanksgiving dinner. Thanks to step by step instructions from my cousin, I cooked the BEST turkey ever. I had one queasy, light headed moment when I had to take the turkey out of the brine on Wednesday night but I made it through. I struggled to keep the darn wings tucked under the body, so it may not have looked as pretty as it was supposed to, but it was seriously so tasty, even without white bread and 2 cups of mayo. Seth said it was by far the best Thanksgiving dinner he had ever had.

Here is proof that I made a whole bird.

Aside from cooking I tried to make Thanksgiving feel like a holiday for my kids. Remember when you were a kid and you hated Thanksgiving because you got told to go in your room, the basement, the play room, or wherever your parents put you to keep you out of the way? And sometimes if you were lucky, it was even your birthday and you were bored and miserable? Or was that just me? Well, I didn't want my kids to feel in the way. I wanted them to feel like they were celebrating. So, every hour or so I would try to bring them up to do a craft, or set the table or something "fun". I learned quickly why moms and dads usually opt for the "just stay out of the way" method because I felt like I was running non-stop to keep up with everything I had planned. It was worth it though because Alex and Alyssa dropped what they were doing and ran upstairs whenever I called them for project time. I think they needed it.

We made tepees, and pilgrim hats, and turkey place cards, and corn on the cob cookies, and then they set the table for us. Have a look.

The corn husks were supposed to be made with green fruit roll ups but we couldn't find any so we used blue-green fruit by the foot which was way too skinny and sticky to work properly. I will be on the look out for green fruit roll ups for next year.

In all of the madness we barely had two minutes to sit down and look at the ads. Seth's family has me addicted to Black Friday ads but this year we started to look through them for a brief moment and sort them in to piles but then the kitchen called us back and the ads spent most of the day looking lonely in their piles.

I failed to take pictures of my cute family, but Alyssa did take a picture of me to send to Valerie of my short(er) hair. You know how much I love having a picture of just me taken. Yuck!

So I put Chloe in the picture to make me less frightened.

I will even show you my profile so that you can see the side of my hair.

And just because I didn't want to be in the photographer's spotlight alone, I made Seth and Chloe pose for me too. Keep in mind it is No Shave November again, when Seth always returns to his Wyoming roots.

To end our Thanksgiving, we invited our friends The Taylors over for pie. A few days before Thanksgiving we found out that they were going solo this year too. We were both done shopping and had our meals planned out but we figured we could at least get together for pie. They brought their desserts and some board games and we spent many hours playing games, while the babies slept and the big kids watched movies and played in the basement. It was a fun way to end a perfect Thanksgiving.

Oh, and look at that brown bag pie I have been talking about. I made it twice this week and it is so yummy. You must try it. It only takes about 20 minutes of prep time. You don't even have to roll the pie crust. I love it. It goes in to the permanent Thanksgiving (and Christmas, and Halloween, and random Tuesday evening)rotation.

I hope you all had a fantastic holiday and just in case you didn't know, I am thankful for you, yes YOU!