Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

This year was the year to spend Thanksgiving day with Aaron's family so, in keeping with tradition, we had "Thanksgiving dinner" at my parent's house a few weeks earlier. With my family, it is a two day affair. We have the appetizers the night before. That way you can really kill the diet and put on even more weight. Every body loves it though. My mom played a Thanksgiving Bingo game with the kids. I think she was trying to occupy them so they didn't totally destroy her house. Good plan!

Here we are all sitting around the table. My grandma and one of my cousins and his family joined us. I say the more the merrier.

My cousin's son joined Charlie under the table. I'm not sure if Charlie appreciated the company but, Will was so happy to be there.

At Aaron's parent's house we realized this was Jace's first Thanksgiving. He loved the sweet potatoes and after he was done eating, he was ready for a nap. Aren't we all like that?

Vanessa LOVED being with her cousins. I just noticed they all have the same color of hair. I guess we know which side that gene comes from.

After dinner, Aaron's mom wanted to do a family picture with all of us. She nominated me to be the cameraman because I have a nice camera. I tried to explain that the camera does not make the photographer but, alas I bought a tripod and here we are........

I can't write about Thanksgiving and not say how thankful I am for my family. This time of year brings back memories from all of our Thanksgivings. For those of you who aren't near family for the holidays, I have to say, the ones we remember most are the ones we spent alone, 1800 miles away from extended family. Thanksgiving is really about remembering our blessings. The rest is just frosting on the cake, I mean whipped cream on the pie.

It's All About the Food

I'll admit, maybe I'm naive. This was the first year I realized that not everybody celebrates Thanksgiving by stuffing themselves full of food. Thursday morning, I saw the line of people bundled up with coolers and sleeping bags outside the local Best Buy waiting for Black Friday. I thought to myself, "I would never give up the feasts of all feasts for any amount of money off a big screen TV". To each his own. For our family, it's all about the food.


As usual, our Thanksgiving celebration started last week. We had an early Thanksgiving with my family since this is the year to spend the actual holiday with the in-laws. We went to church together, which was nice. After church, we ate appetizers until my dad came home from church a few hours later. My sister and I tried to convince dad to let us have dessert first but, he didn't give in. (I really felt like we were 10 years old again.)

I spent Wednesday on the road with the rest of the nation, driving to Rexburg, Idaho (3 hours away) to get Aaron's brother, Jared, so he could spend the weekend with the family. He joined us for our Texas vs. Texas A&M football party Thursday night. (Imagine Thanksgiving and Superbowl Sunday all rolled into one.)

As far as the menus go, Aaron and I made our specialties for both families. Aaron's is the sweet potatoes and mine is the pecan pie. They are both on our "must have" list for Thanksgiving. Everybody contributed to both feasts. The problem is always that there is so much good food that we just can't physically eat it all.

Now that I think about it, I lied. It's not all about the food. That is a huge part of the holiday for us but, the best part of all was spending time with our families. I loved sitting in the living room with my family as each one of us said what we were thankful for. I loved hanging out with Aaron's family as we let allowed our bodies to digest some before we dug into the pies. It's not just about the food. It's about being with all the people I'm most thankful for.

Traditional Thanksgiving

AJ informed us that the pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving for three days. This year we decided to celebrate Thanksgiving pilgrim style.

Our first Thanksgiving dinner was with Aaron's family on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. The food was magnificent! The company was great! We played a touch-football game after dinner and before dessert. (It is important to clear some space in your stomach and burn a few calories before taking more in.) As most of you know, I'm not really an athlete. I did make some key stops throughout the game, however. (By the way, I didn't mean to pull Suzie's pants down that one time.) The kids also enjoyed playing with us. Esteban was all "pro-athlete" and made several touchdowns. He was on the other team, which I was a little bitter about. (I said I wasn't athletic, that doesn't mean I'm not competitive).

Our next Thanksgiving dinner was on the actual holiday with my family. Most of the family went hiking to the "M" in the morning (again, it's all about burning calories in the "pre-food festivities"). Now, I have to explain something here. The only place I have seen letters on mountains is in Utah and Southern Idaho. This is where a gigantic cement, white-washed letter is built on a mountain. I grew up under the shadow of the "M" in my hometown, Morgan. Anyway, Aaron and the boys went on the hike and had a lot of fun. I stayed home due to a pounding headache that later turned into a massive head cold which is not fun. My sister made this to-die-for coconut cream pie that is now added to my "must haves" for Thanksgiving. The food was magnificent! The company was great!

Our third Thanksgiving dinner will be this weekend just with our little family. We have some of our own traditions that we picked up in Texas. We have to finish off our "must haves" list. So, I thought I would find a great deal on turkeys after Thanksgiving. They still had the sale price, but all that was left was gigantic birds. We will be eating turkey leftovers for some time. (If any of you have a good recipes let me know). Who's complaining? As you know in our family, we won't mind eating a Texas-sized turkey. The food will be magnificent! The company will be great!

There you have it. Our Traditional Thanksgiving. Three days of celebrating! What more is there to be thankful for? As I've mentioned before, every night after family prayer we say something that we are thankful for. For Ethan, one night it was bendable thumbs. After a long hard soccer game, Esteban said, "I'm thankful for water." AJ is thankful for electricity. (Now that it is cold outside, I am thankful for that too.) I've already mentioned what Vanessa is thankful for. Savanah usually says she is grateful for her family. Being the mother of four-n-more and a great husband too, I completely agree.

Thanksgiving Traditions

We went to Idaho for our Thanksgiving break. Aaron hasn't spent Thanksgiving with his family since he was 18 years old and I never have. It was wonderful to be with his family. The festivities started on Wednesday when we stayed up late playing cards.

For thanksgiving dinner there was lots of great food including 15 pies (now, I know where he gets it). We spent a relaxing day with the family. That night we drove 30 miles so I could find a newspaper to look through the ads even though we didn't go shopping the next day. It's still fun to plan it out anyway.

Aaron spent Friday cheering on the Longhorns to no avail as they lost to the Aggies of A&M. We also watched the Jazz game that night. Sports and pies are the main Thanksgiving traditions in his family and it was nice to spend it with them.

Pre-Thanksgiving

In my family, it is an "off" year for Thanksgiving, meaning that everybody has Thanksgiving with the in-laws. So,we decided we would have our Thanksgiving dinner the Saturday before the actual holiday. It was nice being together with the whole family. The last time we had Thanksgiving with my family, Esteban was 2 weeks old. None of my kids know what it is like to celebrate Thanksgiving with family. They are ecstatic that we get to eat Thanksgiving dinner twice, and yet they still want to fix it again at our house.

The thing is, we have our own Thanksgiving traditions. For years in Texas we hosted Thanksgiving dinner. Aaron loves to cook mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, turkey, stuffing, and especially pies. Last year we had 12 different pies. He goes all out. We cook for days. Every year, we would have several families over for dinner that didn't have family close by. We picked up several recipes from friends such as Sweet Potatoes Casserole from the Pillings and Homemade Pecan Pie from the Rawlings (Charlene is from the South). We would eat, the guys would watch football, the kids played in the backyard, and the women would go through the newspaper advertisements planning our strategies for early morning shopping the next day. We miss all of our many friends in Texas. It's all my kids have ever known.

I guess we'll have to start new traditions. It's nice to be home for the holidays, yet interesting how we can be here with our families and yet still get homesick.