Thanksgiving fun

This year I got to host Thanksgiving for the first time. I’ll admit, I was a little intimidated by the task that was ahead of me. We had Clark’s brother Dean and also his brother Aaron along with his wife Karen and daughter Amber celebrating the holiday with us. Not only was there lots of cooking to be done (in my postage stamp sized kitchen), but most of the recipes I was using were my mother-in-laws and I had 3 of her sons counting on me to make them perfectly… Luckily all of my nervous planning paid off and dinner turned out (almost) perfect. We made about 3/4 of the food the day before and I had lots of help from Clark and my 2 brothers-in-law. Though I did force them to help with some of the things they wanted, no, needed to have as part of their dinner that I had no intention of eating, such as the 6 pies (for 5 people) or the giant bowl of Jell-O-cool whip-cottage-cheese-pineapple-salad ( um…yeah…). Even Lily tried to get in on the pie action, but her additions were more destructive than anything…
                           
Thanksgiving morning I woke up early and finished defrosting my turkey (I know, I know, I should have done it earlier…) and we set off for our church’s Turkey Bowl. The boys ( Clark, Dean, and Aaron) got to show off their football skills
           
                                   (sorry Dean…)
While the two little ones had fun running around and playing
                             
                             
After the game we headed back home and continued cooking in preparation for the big dinner ahead. I finally figured out what I was doing to the turkey and in to the oven it went. We finished all of the other food amid mario kart tournaments and football watching and, other than the slightly dry turkey, had a great Thanksgiving meal. A few hours later Dean, Aaron and Karen set out for early Black Friday shopping and luckily were successful. Why anyone would stand in line for hours or actually go out on Thanksgiving night is beyond me, but I thoroughly enjoyed playing with what they bought.
We also took a quick trip up to San Francisco but I think I enjoyed watching the little cousins playing together for the first time the most. I love the way that children can take to someone new within a few minutes and it seems like they’ve been friends for a lot longer than that. They got into plenty of mischief and shared lots of giggles. I’m sure they’ll both be excited to see each other again at Christmas time.
                                          
                 
To finish the week off, we celebrated my quarter of a century birthday with a little Baskin Robbins ice cream cake. yum…. A little of that and I’m a very happy girl! Though my favorite part of my birthday was hearing Lily say “Happy day, mommy” over and over. That’s probably my favorite thing that she’s said to me so far, aside from “ I wuv you mommy.” Music to my ears


After this week I know that:

A) Even with a tiny kitchen and 1 oven I don’t have to cook half of the meal the day before in order for it to be a success.
2) I need to defrost the turkey earlier and start checking it’s temperature in the oven WAY before I think it’s done.
D) Hosting Thanksgiving isn’t really all that scary…

By the way, we’ve already started watching our Christmas movies, if you didn’t pick up on my Home Alone reference…