Of course, I'm also thankful for all of you. :) I wish we could see you all more often, but I'm always thinking of everyone and hoping that you're all doing well.
Our Thanksgiving started out with a visit from Paul's brother, Phil (or Uncle Philly, as Jack called him). He was able to spend Tuesday afternoon and evening with us and left for Kansas City on Wednesday.
On Wednesday, I spent the day making our pumpkin pie (I realized on Thursday that I had forgotten to grease the pie plate!) and I also made the stuffing ahead of time. I was so happy that I had gotten those two things out of the way. All I had to do with the stuffing on Thursday was to put it into my muffin pans to make stuffing muffins, like I do every year. Rachael Ray gave me that idea.
I kept having to remind Jack that the pumpkin pie was for dessert on Thanksgiving....after we eat the turkey. Before bed on Wednesday, he asked me, "Are we going to eat the turkey when we wake up tomorrow?" I had to tell him that it was for dinner.
On Wednesday night, Riley went on his....FIRST DATE!!!!!!!!! Lord, have mercy on me!! I gave Riley the long list of rules and told him when he had to call me etc. etc. He was backing out the driveway when I realized that I wanted to get a picture of this moment. It's the first date of any of my children. I told him to hold on a second and ran into the house and grabbed my camera (I didn't tell him this or he would have peeled out of the driveway!). I ran out and as soon as he saw me, there was a screetch and he was backing out of the driveway as fast as he could go. He isn't too excited about me documenting every milestone in his life. Here is the picture I snapped as he was making his escape:
As you can see (if you can't see, click on the picture to make it bigger), he was smiling, so he wasn't too upset. Oh, and I must clarify that it was not a "date." He said she isn't his girlfriend (yet), so it's not a date. They were just going to hang out at the mall, which is, according to Riley, the only thing to do in Oklahoma.
He kept his promise to call me, I called him a few times (to keep him on his toes and all) and he got home at a decent hour. He didn't talk much about it because boys just don't go into details, but he did have a good time.
So, this morning, I was awakened by Jack whispering to me, "Can we eat the pumpkin pie, now?" I'm not kidding when I tell you that he probably asked me that every 20 minutes until the turkey was finished!
I had a headache when I woke up, so went to take some ibuprofen. Then, I got the turkey out, so that I could get it cooking. In this big house, we have a tiny oven. All of the other houses in the neighborhood have a double oven, but not this house! So, I had bought a roaster oven to cook the turkey in. The problem with the roaster oven was that it browned the bottom of the turkey in about an hour's time!
Yeah, not so good. We thought about turning it over, but it was just too big and heavy, so we let it cook and turned the temperature down a bit. It turned out just fine in the end.
After I had gotten the turkey in the oven and at about lunch time, Jack decided that he was going to make his own Thanksgiving meal, inspired by A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. He kept saying he wanted to make a Thanksgiving dinner like Chuck's and got on his stool and pulled out the popcorn. In the cartoon, they eat a meal of pretzel sticks, popcorn and jellybeans. We didn't have jellybeans, but Jack asked me to pop him some popcorn and we had some pretzel twists. He added the peanut butter and jelly sandwich and made it himself.
While I was slaving away in the kitchen and while Oscar was sleeping, Paul set Jack and Braedy up with some window art. They made little window sticky things out of paint. They look like stained glass.
So sweet...
Remember the stuffing that I made on Wednesday? It felt so good to have it done and out of the way and to have one less thing to cook on Thursday. Well, Paul was getting something out of the fridge and this is what happened:
Paul thought that most of it could be salvaged, but I informed him that I was not going to eat stuffing with glass shards in it! So, I had to make stuffing on Thanksgiving after all. Here was our meal when it was finished:
At 1:00 we have the turkey. I got an organic, free-range turkey from a local OK farmer. At 3:00 are the mashed potatoes and gravy. At 6:00 are garlic roasted green beans and at 9:00 is a stuffing muffin. Yum! At 11:00 is corn souffle' or scalloped corn with wild rice. I've never added wild rice to it before, but it was delicious this way! I got the idea online.
Here's another picture of it, right out of the oven:
Here is everyone enjoying their meal:
After everyone was done, I looked in the dining room and this is what I saw:
Of course, Jack wanted pumpkin pie right away (The only thing he ate was some turkey and then wanted pie!). The pumpkin pie wasn't very pretty, but it sure tasted good. I also made a pecan pie.
Teenagers....look what Reeve is eating with!
Braedy, posing for the camera:
Riley, trying to hide from the camera:
Jack with his 2nd piece of pie and Braedy showing us all how full he is feeling:
Reeve grabbed the camera to take a picture of Yours Truly, but he only got my hand (clasping a piece of pumpkin pie crust), my nose and my eyeball. That's fine with me, though. I'm not too keen on having my picture taken. Someday, I'm going to wonder what I looked like when I was younger!
When it was all over, Luke got to eat his Thanksgiving meal.
Unfortunately, much of it came back up in our carpeted game room!!! UGH!
I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!
1 comment:
What a wonderful saga! You are going to be so happy someday that you did this and you can look back at all of your pictures and stories. I've printed them out for Grandma.
Yes, you have a lot to be thankful for and I am thankful for all of you and for your happiness.
Love,
Mom
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