Family Pictures

My good friend Vicki and struck a deal to take each other's family pictures this year.  Unfortunately I have yet to live up to my end of the bargain.  We had scheduling issues and then things just got away from us.

But she did a fantastic job and we couldn't be more pleased.

Our fearless photographer taking a much needed break

Thanksgiving

So Thanksgiving happened.

I was sitting at my computer trying to remember anything at all, (4 1/2 months later) and I confess I was having a hard time.

There was food.  And my parents came down.  And there was giving thanks.  Or at least an attempt at a month long endeavor to think about the things we are thankful for. We had a poster where we could all write down the things we were grateful for.  I've seen cuter versions, I'm sure Pinterest is full of cute ideas, but I'm all about simple and easy.  I apologize for the poor quality pictures.  This is actually now hanging on the wall in my laundry room, and clearly the lighting is bad.  (the walls are actually white)  I thought about re-doing the pictures and messing with camera settings or moving the poster to someplace with better lighting, but then I remembered the poster isn't worth it.  It's meaningful enough to us that I stuck it somewhere we might see it, but it's still kinda ugly so it's hiding in the laundry room.

Christopher really got into the spirit of it.  Some of the things he wrote down were his friends, himself, Hershey's, and hotels.   And I think the TARDIS (from Doctor Who) made an appearance on the list twice, as well as several of the monsters/aliens from Doctor Who like Sibermen (Cyber Men) and Whepping Angels (Weeping Angels).

But the one thing about Thanksgiving that really stood out was the turkey.  Oh my heck. The Anderson's knew somebody who knew somebody who were roasting turkeys in a big pit in their back yard.  And we were lucky enough to be included.

And oh my goodness.  Hands down the best turkey I've ever had.  It wasn't pretty though.  Like the end result wasn't something you'd see gracing the cover of a magazine, because all the meat pretty much fell off the bones.  "Carving the turkey" was little more than picking the bones out of the pile of meat.

You double wrap up your turkey in the special roasting bags you can get at the store, then double wrap that with heavy duty aluminum foil,  and add some kind of loop so they can easily pull the turkeys out with a special pole they rigged up.  Then your turkey cooks all night in a pit with a fire.

And I was very thankful to good friends who are in the know and are happy to share their secrets.