Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Thanksgiving


Aw. My little pilgrim. She's so cute. I got to start my Thanksgiving holiday by helping out in Skippidy's class during her Thanksgiving party. I don't think most classes do a Thanksgiving party, but Skippidy's cute teacher does! We made homemade butter and made hats and homemade toys. It was really fun.

Thanksgiving started off in my favorite way - with a day of baking pies with my friend Emily. We made key lime, crumb-top apple and pumpkin chiffon. I love my mom's pumpkin chiffon pie, and every year I wonder if people would rather have regular old classic pumpkin pie but I just can't not make mom's chiffon pie. And I was very happy to find that my siblings are all happy that I make it too.

Speaking of siblings, I am extremely happy to report that we had every single sibling in town for Thanksgiving. Peter and Margaret and Adam and their families were all able to make it here for the holiday. It was absolutely wonderful to have everyone together. Everyone but my mom, that is. It was such a strange teeter-totter of feelings. To have my dear siblings, to have every single grand kid here, which has never happened before since little baby Sam was born. And yet, there was a gaping hole. The first major holiday without my mom. She is just too ill and bewildered to leave her care village. That was really hard. And yet it was a delightful day otherwise.



The day was slightly intense for me because I was the only cook who was near my own home, so I was kind of the matriarch of the meal. I planned the menu and made assignments and even cooked the turkey. This is a task that rather terrifies me, and I spent a lot of time watching you tube videos. My final recipe ended up being the love child of the recipes of Alton Brown and Gordon Ramsey. It involved overnight brining and initial broiling and bacon over the breast. It was pretty good, but no where near as delicious or tender as the turkey breast which I seasoned and plopped into the crockpot. If a whole real turkey didn't produce such delectable gravy I wouldn't bother with a whole one ever again.

Whitley was in charge of appetizers, and they could have provided the whole meal, they were so lovely and delicious.



Sheri took on potatoes and a chocolate peanut butter pie, Margaret did squash and Brussels sprouts, I did stuffing and rolls. And gravy.  Oh the gravy. So delicious.









Whitley has a wonderful game to play that gets everyone involved in doing the dishes - the loser of every round has to go do dishes until the loser of the next round takes over for them. It's fun!


We attempted some family photos which resulted in hilarious and occasionally awkward results:


Dad wanted to pretend he was dead and Margaret wanted to pretend she was not part of the awkward situation











We had a very hard time getting everyone to smile and not be silly all at the same time, but we gave it a valiant effort. Maybe photoshop can help us patch together a pretty good picture!





It was such a happy day, and tender too. I love my family dearly.

1 comment:

Linda R said...

So awesome to see everyone!! I remember when Peter was born. Hard to believe we are getting older and have kids growing up.