Thanksgiving Wrap Up

With Ron's wierd work schedule, we usually have to be pretty flexible when it comes to the holidays. This year was no different. He works Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights this week, so we decided to celebrate Thanksgiving on Tuesday. It's the 2nd or 3rd year we've had to do that, so it's becoming known as Turkey Tuesday at our house. But it at least allows us to have Thanksgiving together as a family, which is important to me. I invited our close friends, Rex and Michele and my mother over to eat with us too. No use going to all that work fixing a huge meal for just 3 of us!

Brenna was somewhat limited on what she could help me with since her hand is in a cast, but she did set a beautiful table.

I always do my turkeys in a bag and you just can't beat how moist and juicy they come out. It's so simple I don't understand why anyone freaks out about cooking a turkey.

It's funny, but we pretty much have the same meal every year for Thanksgiving. I have a special frozen jello salad that I make, but otherwise it's mostly just the standard turkey day meal. Stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravey, green beans, rolls, banana bread, and pies.

I ordered some pie tart shells and then filled them with pumpking and pecan filling. Huge hit! They are just the right size too.

We had a nice meal and some great conversation, but it was a fairly early evening, which was fine. I was kind of tired by that time. Ron and Brenna took over cleaning up the dishes and within an hour of everyone leaving, my house was back to order and we were in our pj's watching TV with our feet up.

Thursday was spent just laying around the house and doing NOTHING! Ron was asleep as he worked all night, but Brenna and I just enjoyed the peace and quiet. We watched the Macy's parade, went thru all the ads in the paper and plotted our shopping strategy plus football was on too. We both were reading Janet Evanovich books, she was reading 17 and I was reading 18. We had turkey sandwiches and leftovers to nibble on, so life was good. I enjoyed reading everyone's facebook updates about the craziness of the day cooking and dealing with the family drama while I didn't have to do any of it.

My Mom ended up having Thanksgiving at her house on Thursday and made a big stink about coming over there, but I took a pass on it and she wasn't very happy with me. I just really didn't feel like dealing with the drama that are my brothers. I felt bad knowing she was going to have to do everything herself but in some ways was glad that she was reminded about how much work it really is and how they never help her with any of it. I got the full report on Friday and while she tried to make it sound like it was wonderful, she let slip a few too many things about what really happened for me to know I made the right decision by not going over there. Gotta stick to my guns on that!

I love to shop on Black Friday but I'm not one of the crazy ones that gets out there right when everything opens. That's just nuts. Brenna and I left home at 8am yesterday and had everything planned out. There was only one game at Best Buy that was sold out, but Brenna found it on line for cheaper and free shipping, so that wasn't a big deal. We pretty much got what we were looking for and came home by noon. The longest line we stood in was probably 2 people deep and the only really crazy place was Walmart, but I hate Walmart anyway.

After dinner, I worked on the tree and Brenna got everything wrapped. I had to put new lights on the tree so that took a while and was a real pain, let me tell you. By the time I was done doing that, she was done wrapping, so we both decorated the tree. And now we are DONE! We can sit back and enjoy the rest of the holiday. I think that is the best feeling in the world.