thanksgiving

When my mom called to tell me that she and my dad had bought their tickets here for Thanksgiving I was told that the meal would be all mine to make. I started planing. I borrowed a Thanksgiving book from my friend and I made a meal plan. But then I got sick a few days before my parents came. I couldn’t do much of anything but get through the days. Thankfully I woke up on Thursday morning feeling really really good. So I started cooking and baking.

Since I had ben sick I didn’t have a chance to look over exactly how and when the meal would need to be made. All I’d had the energy to do was make a grocery list that Patrick and my brother, David, used on Monday night when they went shopping. So when I read over the directions for the turkey that morning I found that I was supposed to let the turkey marinate for 6-24 hours. Because I was determined to have a chill Thanksgiving day I just thought, “Well, we are going to have one bland turkey, folks” and let it marinate for only an hour… well more like 20 mins. It turned out really good anyway. I gave people jobs and I made sure we were on time and the food was looking good. Aydan stayed in her pajamas all day, lounging with her Wita and Wito while her dad and I cooked away in the kitchen. She slept through all of the meal but had her own sweet potatoes when she woke up. By the end of the cooking time we had an amazing feast before us and a million reasons to be thankful; here are a few of them.

My amazing amazing family. My in-laws are loving, supporting and encouraging, my parents are totally in love with us and obsessed with our baby girl, my brother is encouraging and dropped everything he was doing in Washington state to live with us so he’d know his niece before we left the country, my husband loves me and laughs with me, he never puts me down and is nothing but encouraging, and my daughter she’s just wonderful, lovely and perfect.

My job is the best I could ask for. The family I work for loves us and thinks the world of me and my family. We could not have asked for a better situation. We love us some Shins.

I’m so thankful for my good friends back home. The girls I grew up with who have done nothing but love and support us these past few years have been such a blessing to me. My friends who I’ve known not as long have helped me be a better wife and mother and have encouraged me to love deeper and better than I thought I could. Then there are the friends who we have just gotten to know while we have lived here. So thankful for the community that we have been invited into; I’m not sure these past couple years would have been so good with out them.

Then there is the food, the amazing, real food that we have the privilege to eat daily. I’m very thankful for that as well. Here is some of that that we ate on Thanksgiving:

Butterflied Turkey with Herb Glaze and Chardonnay Gravy… delicious. Patrick cut the turkey in half, cut out it’s backbone and broke all it’s little bones to flatten it out. Pretty manly and gruesome. This picture just doesn’t give it justice. It was beautiful.