Gathered Together After a Turkey Trot

 

Wow.  It feels like forever since my last post.  I hope every one of you American readers had a marvelous Thanksgiving.  Ours was filled with family time, drizzly weather, and good food and wine.

 

Our cool, rainy Thursday morning began with six members of our family headed off to an annual turkey trot.  Two of our sons ran this 5K, two people volunteered as course marshals, and two were bystanders who cheered the runners on.  This was the first race ever for our ten year old who has boundless energy and can literally run circles around me any day.  Our older son hung near him through the race, and both crossed the finish line within seconds of each other with quite a bit of energy left.  They finished in the top half of the 234 runners, which wasn't bad for two amateurs who really don't train for these things, and the entry fees went to non-profit organizations.

 

When they all returned, cold and damp from the November rain, I had the turkey roasting in the oven and appetizers/light lunch on the table.

 

I cheated this year and picked up most of the appetizers from the deli and bakery sections of the supermarket.  The cherry cordial Hershey's Kisses were the favorite new item of the morning.

 

Our traditional Thanksgiving dinner was scheduled to be held at 3 PM, but as usual, we didn't sit down to eat until a bit later.

 

That was because we were waiting on these two casseroles to finish baking.  I always need to double the recipes, and the vegetable dishes always seem to need more time to set up than I predict.  The sweet potato casserole on the right is the one I make every year, along with millions of other Americans, I'm sure.  This year I made a corn casserole instead of green bean casserole, which pleased my children tremendously.  There were a lot of these recipes on Pinterest, but the one I used can be found here at www.stuckonsweet.com. The only change I made was doubling the recipe, and I had to nearly double the bake time.

 

My little ones were standing close by, salivating and very eager for the dinner bell to ring.

 

Hubby did the traditional turkey carving, with the assistance of his dad, while I performed all those last minute tasks with the help of my mother-in-law and teenage daughter.  

 

But in the end, it all came together seamlessly, and we gave thanks and began eating around 3:30.  It looked like we had enough food to feed us all for a week, but as it turned out, everything was gone within two days.

 

After dinner and kitchen cleanup, there were Christmas movies, games of Phase 10, pumpkin pie and dessert wine, and just more family time in general.

 

My day was complete after getting to hold this sweet baby boy in my arms while he slept peacefully amidst all the ruckus around him.

And for all these things, I am thankful.

Of Thanksgivings Past

 

Thanksgiving is just a week away, and the only thing I've done to prepare is buy the turkey.  In case I don't have time to do any blogging between now and then, I thought I'd leave you with a few pictures of some of our Thanksgivings we've celebrated since we moved into our farmhouse ten years ago.

 

Let me start by saying that the images in my head of what our Thanksgiving should be like are similar to last year's Land's End cover of one of their holiday catalogs.  But the reality is that our celebrations really look like this...

 

Our youngest son was actually baptized over the Thanksgiving holiday in 2006, which is a beautiful thing, but he screamed throughout most of it.

 

This was the children's table in 2007, back when we had a smaller kitchen table and we could squeeze in a kids' table.  Now that our table seats 10-12, there really isn't room for much else in our farmhouse kitchen.  When we have lots of family here, we now have to split up into two rooms.

 

We have actually spent a number of Thanksgivings at Disney World.  The kiddos love it, but I never quite feel like it's really Thanksgiving when we have dinner there.  These three are all preteens and teens now.  How I wish I could have just one of those days back again, preferably without the tantrums.

 

Our only orange-haired son has majorly loved food all his life.  When his siblings and cousins were finished and playing, he continued to sit at the table and clean his plate...and completely devour this turkey leg.

 

 For many years when my house was full of toddlers and little ones, this is what our Thanksgiving dinner table really looked like.  Definitely nothing fancy, mismatched everything, sippy cups, and if you look closely you'll see that our one year old has her bare foot propped up on the table.  I'm fairly certain the vino got me through.

 

Remember that this is what I really wanted to see at our Thanksgiving dinner table.

 

In 2013 we were back at Disney and had reservations to eat at Mickey's outdoor barbecue.  There was a Thanksgiving buffet, and our table was right next to the dance floor so we could be up close to all of the Disney characters.  Unfortunately, our youngest was, and still is, afraid of nearly every person dressed up in a full costume.  She was in hysterics when Donald Duck tried to get her to dance with him, and we had to carry her out of there with her screaming at the top of her lungs. 

 

Thanksgiving 2014 brought us six inches of heavy snow, which was kind of fun since there was nowhere else we had to be.

 

It was the only year that our children got to go sledding before they ate Thanksgiving dinner.

 

Last year my youngest was six, and I had a Pinterest board full of Thanksgiving pins I wanted to try, so in addition to our traditional turkey dinner, I also tried out some new things earlier in the day, and had a great time.  With the children older now, I feel like all the traditional trimmings are getting kind of boring and I could make them in my sleep, but my kids have begged me not to change the menu.  I've agreed to only try one new dish this year, and it's only allowed to replace the green bean casserole.

So just in case I am frantically cleaning, cooking, baking, and decorating over the next week and don't get back to my blog, May All of You Have a Happy Thanksgiving with blessings in abundance.