Thanksgiving at Home

This is coming a bit late but after my last blog, I'm sure you can understand. =)

I loved, LOVED, LOVED having my family here for Thanksgiving. It's the first time we've had T-day dinner at home since we married in 1995.

My LILsis,

Kim, came up Wednesday with her daughters from Illinois. We made a late night trip to Walmart Wednesday night and stayed up chatting til 3am.

Thursday morning we brought Michael over to the KC Hall to work the free dinner our church puts on every year. I missed working it this year but Kim said she'd like to come help, so maybe next year???


When we got home we got right to cooking. I was very pleased to find that Kim and I work well in the kitchen together. She just went right to work on anything that had to be done and quickly adapted to the quirks of my oven.

I didn't have time to fold the laundry that had yet to be done but we did have time to set the tables and even made crafty little turkey place cards.

My mom and Jason and his family arrived around 4pm and we sat down to eat just after 5pm. Even with all 8 children sitting around a separate table in the living room it was very calm and we were able to enjoy our dinner.

We partook of a gorgeous turkey stuffed with whole cloves of garlic and rosemary.

(all pictures courtesy of Kimberli Nelson)

Mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes (sorry, I don't put brown sugar or marshmallows on mine...just butter, thank you), sausage stuffing that turned out excellent but we'll cut the amount of sausage next time, a corn casserole that everyone LOVED, bacon green beans that could've been skipped, homemade cranberry sauce that didn't last long at all rounded out the meal and added color.....

or not!

And of course we had to have our relish tray (all the olives were gobbled up, wah!).





























We left a bit of room for our choice of fresh blueberry or pumpkin pie (ty, Kim!), or apple pecan cheesecake.

The older kids did the dishes, leaving the pots and pans for us adults...but we had the kitchen spic and span in no time!

We ended the night with a game of Last Word. No, it wasn't an argument between Michael and me...we actually played the game. Kim won both rounds, if I remember correctly, which didn't surprise any of us. LOL

Overall it was a very exciting and wonderful Thanksgiving. I really have so much to be thankful for!