First up: Thanksgiving and my Mom’s Birthday. This was the
first year we had to spill over into a church because of our numbers. You do
loose some of the homey feel, but no one was ready to offer up their sofas to 280
little fingers. Lindsey had made darling
centerpieces and my mom brought tablecloths and it looked cheerful in no time.
Another family was feasting till 4 pm so this made for a later than usual start
time. No worries, I was glad to have the morning to make my stuffing and rolls.
The day before I had enlisted the girls to help me with the pies. I was so
happy they were willing to help. This was the only reason we were done in time
to go to Orem and see Mike and Donna who had arrived. I had one pie still in
the oven when it was time for us to leave. My friend Pam offered to come over
and take it out. She called me, “When I went over there was smoke coming out of
your oven.” I panicked, “WHAT!” She was KIDDING. Phew.
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| Peanut Butter Cup Pie: by Ava (next year we need to make TWO). She also made a banana cream pie. |
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| Apple Pie by Mallerie. She also made cornbread and let it dry out over night for Jamie's famous stuffing. |
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| Katrina: Pecan Pie and Cranberry SAUCE. I fear she thought she was making jelly. We won't cook it on hight for 20 minutes next year maybe. |
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| The picture of baking. I made a pumpkin cheesecake pie and orange rolls. |
Matt was helpful where ever he was needed. Mallerie had him open cans of chicken broth to put in her stuffing. He opened the can and asked, "Do I drain this?"
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| The bird! Neither Jon nor Matt wanted to pick at the bones for every last bit of turkey. My mom said to go dump it in the field for they animals, "They love stuff like that." Being her birthday and all, I sent those boys out into the field. |
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| Let this be a lesson to us all why we don't encourage overhead fluorescent lighting people! I yam what i yam. |
The food was soooo delish; I look at these pictures and my
mouth waters. Eliza brought out a lovely carrot cake when the time was right
and then we dove into the pies. I was sorry to see that my pumpkin cheesecake
was left untouched. I think mainly because it looked like raisins were floating
in it instead of chocolate chips. Also the pumpkin mouse was more the color of
eggs. For this reason I put a sign, ‘Those aren’t raisins, their chocolate
chips!” But to no avail, I had to bring it again to Granny’s Christmas party
the next day. Sadie finally tried some, “Who would have guessed a raisin quiche
could be so tasty.” Ha!
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| The little kids were all sitting at a round table till someone brought out this small one and they moved. This left the round table set up and decorated with no one sitting at it. I noted it was just like a ward party, "That's for the less active that we hoped would come." |
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| The table proved useful for coloring time. |
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| My mom had all kinds of info on the first Thanksgiving with a packet for each family. The kids sat for MOST of it. |
For my mom's gift I crocheted around the edge of a soft afghan in beige for her. Graham came up to me and told me exactly what he wanted me to write in the card:
"Granny, we yarned this for you because you are always yarning stuff for other people. We made it long enough to go over your head if you are taking a nap and have a bad dream."
I brought large marshmallows for the kids to decorate with
marker and then they saw how far they could throw them. I had tons of
marshmallows leftover since I just gave them to the kids in the gym. I didn’t
want to go hunting through the church. The next day at the Christmas party I
brought the bag of treats again in case the kids needed an activity. We
didn’t. Later while the adults were
visiting some of the kids were saying they were hungry even though we had eaten
a nice dinner. Lindsey said, “You have to eat when the food is out, otherwise
you’ll be hungry.” I pointed to my bag of marshmallows, “That’s why I carry
this around.”
(Boy word sure spreads fast when there is an open bag of
marshmallows.)
**You may stop reading now if you want any respect for me in the future.**
After the party was over the older girls begged me to take
them out for some Black Friday shopping. I drove them up to the outlets. There
wasn’t even a place for me to park! I dropped them off and went to Wal-Mart.
I’ve never been to black Friday and when I saw the throngs of people it was
confirmed, “it does exists. “ I picked
the girls up and we were home by 2 am. As I was getting ready for bed I got to
thinking of a certain receipt that I thought I had thrown away with something I
needed to return. I looked in the
kitchen trash. Shoot, the trash had already been taken out. I opened the garage
and lifted the top sack out. I rummaged through disgusting Thanksgiving debris;
giblets, egg shells, oatmeal (with rubber gloves of course.) How can a receipt
just disappear? The next day Matt said, “What took so long to come to bed last
night.” I couldn’t tell him! It wasn’t one of my finer moments standing outside
in the middle of the night in my robe digging through the trash. Then I started
wrapping Elder Wasson’s gifts and saw in the bag that blasted receipt! I
started laughing and then told Matt of my shame.
The food was soooo delish; I look at these pictures and my
mouth waters. Eliza brought out a lovely carrot cake when the time was right
and then we dove into the pies. I was sorry to see that my pumpkin cheesecake
was left untouched. I think mainly because it looked like raisins were floating
in it instead of chocolate chips. Also the pumpkin mouse was more the color of
eggs. For this reason I put a sign, ‘Those aren’t raisins, their chocolate
chips!” But to no avail, I had to bring it again to Granny’s Christmas party
the next day. Sadie finally tried some, “Who would have guessed a raisin quiche
could be so tasty.” Ha!
