Thanksgiving

I'm not sure why, but we didn't manage to get any pictures of Thanksgiving this year so I had to "steal" one. Anybody who knows me knows the above picture could never be associated with anything I've done. There are several problems with it actually. First of all, there is stuffing inside of that turkey to which I very strongly object. Also, garnishes ... seriously? I don't think so. Our turkey itself looked almost that good, but I had absolutely nothing to do with it. That was all Dave and about four cubes of butter. Good grief.

Dave and I hosted Thanksgiving dinner at our house ... and yes I did just hear all of you gasp. Very funny. Truth is, we survived and so did everybody else. Nobody got food poisoning. Everybody was happy. We all ate until we were sick. Seems like a success to me.

This was our year to spend Thanksgiving with the Leatherwoods, and since Dave's parents were leaving at like 5:00 a.m. the next morning for a tour in Jerusalem and John and Angie have a darling new baby (who happens to not love sleeping for long periods of time yet), we volunteered our house and our finely tuned cooking skills for the celebration. Truth is, when Dave and I started planning and going over the menu items, we discovered we had technically not made anything on the Thanksgiving menu ... ever. Yeah yeah ... I hear you laughing. Whatever. No turkey had ever been cooked in my oven, no homemade stuffing, no homemade mashed potatoes, no homemade pies, no cranberry anything, no yam anything, no homemade gravy - NONE of it. I know. I'm a slacker. Cooking is not my friend. Now Stove Top and Rhodes frozen dough, those are my friends. Before you start to worry, none of my family is starving. Trust me.

Thanks to some help, we survived. I'm not embarrassed to say that Jason came over, roasting pan in tow, and put the turkey in the oven for us in the morning and showed us what to do with it. As soon as he started pulling stuff "out" of the turkey, I was officially done, and and Dave took over. Kathy and Angie made the rolls, pies, potatoes, relish tray, and gravy. Laura didn't even eat dinner with us, but she sent her yams and cranberry sauce with Kathy ... that was awfully nice of her. Thanks to my mom for teaching me, via text messaging mind you, how to make Dixie salad, which happens to be my FAVORITE thing on the Thanksgiving menu. Dixie salad is apples, pineapple, golden raisins, pomegranates, bananas, grapes, celery, mandarin oranges, and whipping cream all mixed together... you can't go wrong with that. Yum! So we survived hosting our first Thanksgiving. We spent the day eating and playing games and of course remembering the things we are grateful for.
Saturday night was the annual BYU-Utah football game and we had a full house as usual. We had a great time watching, eating, laughing, stressing, and then CHEERING! Go Cougars! What a great game! It was a fun weekend spent with family and friends. No shopping though. I'm not much of a Black Friday shopper. I prefer online and empty stores. I think I'm too grouchy, and I'm definitely NOT a morning person. So no Black Friday shopping for me. I better get busy though ... Christmas is only 24 days away, and before that are our anniversary and Dave's birthday and about a million other things. I did get my Christmas/Anniversary present early on Saturday thanks to the KSL Classifieds (my favorite!). I have wanted an elliptical forever, and since I have joined a "Biggest Loser" competition, I figured I better get it now and get busy. Wish me luck!