THANKSGIVING

So...I can honestly say that I will NEVER take being able to show up at somebody's house where a delicious Thanksgiving dinner is already prepared for granted again! I don't know how people do it every year! I was surprised at how much work and time went into preparing one meal. I think all of this stems from the fact that I am a perfectionist. Nothing I do ever turns out absolutely PERFECT, but I always really want it to. So, of course, I wanted this dinner to be perfect. Taylor's family came to Washington for the holiday and we were SOOO excited to have them come. We have really been looking forward to it and are so thankful that they decided to come see us. Anyway, so I have spent literally hours looking online for recipes and reading reviews to see which ones are the best. I planned the menu for dinner and was really excited about how it was going to turn out. I should have known that cooking Thanksgiving dinner for the first time will NEVER turn out perfect....

The first disaster in the kitchen happened with my first attempt at pie crust which was supposed to be "fail proof" and delicious. Well, I made the dough, chilled it, and rolled it out into my pie tins. It looked really good......until about 10 minutes into cooking when it shrunk so far down into the pan that you couldn't have filled it with ANYTHING. Moral of the story?? Experiment with recipes before you prepare them for a special occasion!

Second disaster occured when I was talking and not paying attention to what I was doing while making a pumpkin cheesecake. The recipe called for a 15 oz can of pumpkin, but I apparently thought that it was a good idea to put a 29 oz can in instead. It did turn out okay because I added 2 more egg yolks to help it set up. Lesson learned?? Don't talk and cook at the same time!

Anyway, I could go on all day about things that I did wrong with this dinner, but it all turned out okay in the end. We had turkey, ham, rolls, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, homemade cranberry sauce, banana cream pie, pumpkin cheesecake, and apple pie. Tay's mom saved the day and made the rolls and stuffing for me. Overall, it worked out well and we all ate A TON!

After the cooking was over, we were able to just hang out and have fun! We weren't able to do a ton of stuff outside because it was a bit cold, but I still had so much fun talking and spending time with them. Here are some pictures in a random order because I have already spent WAY too much time trying to get this blog to work for me...

We went out to eat at a local Mexican restaurant together. It was a lot of fun and delicious! The other picture you're seeing is what I like to call Tay's "TURKEY HANGOVER" aka what he does to get out of the dishes.

So, Taylor and Johnny were wrestling to see who was tougher.....It was a pretty even match if you ask me!

Here are the pictures of our feast! We ate soooo much. I'm sure I gained 10 pounds over this weekend!

Here's Tay's "picked on" face while doing the dishes! But, really, the guys did all of the dishes which was soo great!

Bentley and Sadie LOVED having everybody here. In fact, this morning when Sadie woke up, the first thing she did was run all around the house looking for everybody. She came back into our bedroom looking pretty confused because they had to leave early this morning. You can tell that the dogs miss them already!

So, this is pretty much how Johnny was for 90% of the trip. He was texting his girlfriend all the time. And if he wasn't talking to her, he was talking ABOUT her. It was pretty cute. Nauseating, but cute!!! I kept teasing him, but he's a pretty good sport.

So, that's our Thanksgiving in a nutshell. We had so much fun, but missed all of our family that couldn't be with us. We love everybody and are so thankful for all that we have been blessed with. We have two amazing families, the gospel, and eachother. What more could you ask for?