Thanksgiving

The original plan was to go to my parents but we ended up doing our own thing this year.  I'm so glad that we did! I love having our own family traditions.

The Menu:

Roast Turkey with Apples and Oranges

Southern Cornbread Stuffing

Apple-Orange Cranberry Relish (Grandma Cohoon)

Green Bean Casserole (um, thank you Paula Deen!!)

Sweet Potato Bake

Pumpkin Pie

Cherry Pie

Frozen Cherry-Pineapple Dessert (Grandma Willardson)

Hawaiian Rolls

Spinach Dip

On Wednesday I prepared all the casseroles and made the desserts and appetizers. I also made up some monkey bread dough for the morning so we'd have something to snack on during the day.  Wednesday was a much more hectic cooking day for me, but I managed to get it all done fairly stress-free.

Thursday morning we woke up early (like every single morning since becoming parents) and I finished making the monkey bread. We chowed down on that while watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with James. He jumped around and danced with each passing float.

After that Paul started on the Turkey and football commenced.  I started cleaning up in preparation for Christmas decorations--which by law in our house must go up the day after Thanksgiving. I got the boxes ready to put away the Fall decor and moved the Christmas boxes in the house. At this point we were starving. Smelling that turkey was killing us!  So we brought out the dip a bit earlier than expected, but whatever.

After the turkey exited the oven, my casseroles promptly entered. It was not as stressful as last year. Probably because it was just us.  I'm kind of sad that I didn't grow up having Thanksgiving dinner. I feel like I missed out! I love Thanksgiving and hope that James will grow up loving it, too.

Can I just say that Paul makes the best turkey EVER? Because he does. He really does. We have been eating Thanksgiving dinner for two whole days now and probably have another two days worth of breakfast, lunch and dinner. I'm ok with that :)

First Taste

Yum!

I finally figured out how to get him to eat carrots: Spinach dip!

The spread.

Helping me check the lights.

We are so grateful for our many blessings this year and the many wonderful people in our lives.  I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving.