Family Thanksgiving

I am thankful for my family!!

This year it was my turn to have Thanksgiving with my family and it was also our turn to host. It turned out to be a ton of work, but lots of fun too. :) I did get to sleep in until about 9 am which was WONDERFUL! Then I decided I'd better get to work.

I got up, showered, and went right to the kitchen to start preparing my first turkey ever. It was pretty gross, especially the skin! The recipe I used said to put the oil/seasoning mixture underneath the skin and then toothpick the skin back down into place. BLAH! It sickened me to pull out the neck, and then it was even worse to pull the bag of "parts" out of the bum! Could they make it any worse? I guess it could be worse. At least I didn't have to chase the turkey down, chop off it's head, watch it run around a little more, boil it, pluck off all the feathers, and cut out the guts on my own. So, I'll stop complaining. I like to eat turkey. Let's leave it at that.

After I got the turkey in the oven it was on to the rolls! Mmmmm, homemade rolls. I was in charge of rolls this year because Thanksgiving was at my house. I ended up making over 9 dozen rolls! I don't mind though, rolls are fun to make and so delicious.


While the rolls were rising I cut and peeled about 15 lbs of potatoes and left them in water so they wouldn't turn black. Then Jeremy and I started working on the seating situation. Our guest count for the day was 30, so we had to find places for 30 people to sit (18 of them being children). I didn't want kids carrying their plates of food over the carpet, so we managed to make places for all the kids to sit in the kitchen, and all the adults in the family room. Here is how it looked before it became chaotic.


After setting up the tables and chairs I finished my roll-making. Here are the finished, pre-cooked products. Count them up if you wish, there ARE more than 9 dozen here.

After an entire morning of being on my feet and being worked to the bone, my family started to arrive. :) Before I knew it, hoards of food came pouring in through the front door with each new family who arrived. There were hardly places to put it all!

I gave Jeremy the job of carving the turkeys. There were 2. Mama cooked one at her house and brought it over. Shauna and I put the potatoes on to cook in the pressure cookers, and I started baking the rolls, one batch at a time.

Finally, after another 1 1/2 hours of work in the kitchen, dinner was ready! We ate at about 3:30 pm and boy was it delicious! All the parents got the kid's plates ready. It really helped to cut down on kitchen traffic by having the kids stay seated. The kids were really good about it too. They all seemed to have a good time eating with their cousins.

Here is Alexandra enjoying her Thanksgiving dinner. I can actually get her to smile now for pictures. I tell her, "show me your teeth!" This one didn't turn out so well, but you get the idea.

I realize now that I skipped an entire portion of our day with the picture storytelling! After dinner all the kids ran outside to play for about an hour. It was perfect! That gave us time to clean up and visit a little while the kids worked off some energy. Then they all came in and Jeremy took them down to the theater room to watch Wall-E.

I quite enjoyed visiting with my family while the kids were occupied. We even had time for my favorite part - a couple of games with the adults!

Pretty soon the kids were back upstairs asking for more food. They all knew pies had been brought into the house and were putting on the pressure pretty heavy to cut into them. Reluctantly the adults split and we were back to work in the kitchen making whipped cream and cutting pies. We had so many different kinds of pies that I don't even remember all the flavors to list here. Basically, everyone was overly satisfied and had their fill.

I was so proud of myself at dinner because I only ate until I was full, not overstuffed. Well, I made up for it with the pie. I ate 2 pieces which put me OVER THE TOP. I had to sit on the couch and try to not move for fear the pie would come right back up again. The pie was really good, though and thankfully Alexandra is still little enough to share off my plate. I had one piece of Pumpkin Chiffon and a piece of Lemon Buttercream. They were both excellent!

Jeremy took this picture of what the husbands did for most of the time. They holed up in my living room and conversed. :) Doug is hiding his face with a pillow. Would we expect anything else? I thought it was funny, they took all the leftover chairs and used them all as foot rests.

It seemed to me that everyone had an enjoyable time at my house and I'm glad that we could provide a place for the party. By about 9:30pm everyone decided it was time to head home and thankfully, when all was said and done, everyone pitched and to help clean up my house that had been literally destroyed with toys by all the playing kids.

It was almost 10pm by the time the last car pulled away. Our kids were exhausted so Jeremy and I set about the task to get them to bed. Nathan was sent downstairs to find pajamas and never came back up. When we went down to check on him, we found him at the bottom of the stairs. He was in only his underwear completely knocked out! He played himself out! Jeremy got him to bed and I got Athena and Samantha to bed.

Michelle brought these little Pooh bear chairs for Nathan and Alexandra because her kids have grown out of them. The chairs were a hit! They love them! As we were getting the kids ready for bed, Alexandra went and settled into her chair happy as a clam.

Jeremy and I settled in front of the TV with Alexandra to watch our favorite Thursday shows, The Office and Survivor. Much to our dismay, neither of them were new this week. What a super bummer! Instead we fell asleep in front of the TV watching the news. So that's the end of our Thanksgiving day. It was a good day and I enjoyed having everyone over. Now we will move onto the next big event . . . CHRISTMAS!!! :)