thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving dinner last week! Victoria and Craig ate with us, and it was fun to have a full table.

Our menu:

Green bean casserole

Turkey!

Mashed potatoes

Veggies

Orange glazed yams

White rolls

Stuffing

Cookie pie (Victoria) and pumpkin pie (John)

Gravy

Set table with our china and goblets

John's plate

We were really sad that we didn't take a picture of the turkey before John carved it! It looked beautiful. Since I had to work the night before Thanksgiving, and slept that morning before dinner, I didn't have much time to make a lot of the dinner. So I am so happy that John was such a good cook and was willing to cook. John did the turkey, which he brined the day and night before, and then added the vegetables to cook in the turkey drippings while it was in the oven. He made mashed potatoes from those. He also made the pumpkin sweet potato pie, which was great, especially since it was his first attempt at a pie. He also made the gravy which was very delicious!

I did have time to make rolls before going into work on Wednesday, then we warmed them back up before dinner. Then I made the yams, green bean casserole, and stuffing right before dinner. It was very yummy, and we loved having lot of leftovers! Our favorite is what we have called Thanksgiving Pie that I made tonight. We chopped up some carrots, celery, and onion, added peas, threw in some shredded turkey meat, and stirred it all up in a bunch of gravy. We lined a casserole dish with mashed potatoes, added the meat mixture, and covered it with a pie crust. Put it in the oven, and bam! Thanksgiving in a pie. It was wonderful and the easiest thing for leftovers.

I can't turn the picture on the blog (the file on my computer is the right direction).

After we ate, we watched Scrooge, the musical version with Albert Finney. Victoria had never seen any version of A Christmas Carol, and since this is the best version, I wanted her to have the best experience possible with her first viewing of the story. I put up our tree and decorated it while we watched. Then the four of us did clean up (which was lovely that my guests helped so I didn't have to do all of it later by myself). We called/skyped our families, then John, Craig, and I went Black Friday shopping.

We went to Best Buy and got a few movies, and I got new earbuds. Craig also got some movies. The lines were so long that we didn't finish and leave until 2:30. John went home and went to bed, and I went out again to JC Penney's. They had the most amazing, perfect boots that I have been looking for for two years. But the smallest size they had was still too big! I was so disappointed. I bought a necklace for myself from John for Christmas, some new white cuff-link shirts for John, and two long-sleeved shirts for me! I also went to Bath and Body Works to get more Twilight Woods soap and lotion since my hoard at home was running low.

When I got up Friday afternoon, John and I went out again to Barnes and Noble to get a book he's been wanting for a long time, and then to WalMart just to see what was going on and look at Christmas stuff.

We had a great holiday!