Day 12 - I'm thankful for sharing a meal with friends and family

Oops!  Forgot to post yesterday!
Day 12 - I'm thankful for sharing a meal with friends and family!  :)

Yesterday I spent all day cooking and cleaning.  A few times a year I get excited about cooking a big Thanksgiving-style meal.  Yesterday seemed like the perfect day with the weather getting cold and it being early November and all.  So at 7am I began preparing our dinner!

I love cooking my turkey breast in the crockpot!  It comes out moist and delicious and takes little to no effort.  I simply put the turkey in, fill the crockpot half full of water, and put in on high for the day.  I turn it to low or warm when the turkey is falling off the bone.  ;)  A whole turkey breast is a lot of food (even for the 5.5 of us having dinner together).  So I always end up with meat going in the freezer!  This is great for enchiladas, turkey and noodles, or turkey tortilla soup.  I also end up with lots of broth (I add a couple bullion cubes to the water) which I save and freeze for another time when I make soup.  :)  Waste not.  ;)

After my turkey was started I got my sweet potatoes ready.  When we were shopping I asked Michael to get 6 sweet potatoes or 3 lbs, whichever came first.  Michael misheard me and we ended up with 5.25 lbs of sweet potatoes.  :P  My sweet potato casserole called for butter, eggs, brown sugar, and salt mixed into my sweet potato mixture.  It was going to be very dessert-like for a side dish.  :P  It also had caramelized pecans on top, then marshmellows on top of that.  If your sweet potatoes on Thanksgiving don't taste like pumpkin pie, you're not doing it right.  These were delicious!!  After I got the mixure put together and the pecan mixture spread on top, I set the casserole to the side to wait until 30 minutes before dinner time to pop it back in the oven and add the marshmellows.

Next I prepared my green bean casserole.  Super easy to prepare, not going to dry out, delicious...  I love green bean casserole!  I always make it with French Cut green beans.  I make this one several times a year.  It's just so easy and yummy!  And I can eat it all on my own if Michael decides he doesn't want any.  ;)

In between doing all this cooking I was also changing diapers, feeding Connor, preparing food for Avery and Dayton, and refereeing debates over who various toys and books belonged to.  I managed to take a couple videos during that time.  One of Avery and Dayton wearing fairy wings from Avery's birthday party and running around like they were flying, and one of Avery and Dayton saying sweet potatoes very clearly.  It was so cute!  :)  Connor didn't really want to be put down yesterday.  He might still be feeling a little under the weather after his shots on Monday.  So unless I was holding him or he was sleeping, he was crying.  It's hard to get much done in that environment, but I managed.

After the kids went down for their naps (I managed to keep them up until 1pm) I worked on cleaning.  I picked up the living room, dining room, breakfast nook, kitchen, and kids' bathroom.  After getting things picked up, I worked on some more food.  I had to make a pan of cornbread for stuffing.  When I realized I didn't have a can of cream of chicken soup, I searched the internet for a recipe to make my own.  And I found one!!  :D  I finally got the stuffing put together and was ready to move on to my last prep food.

I peeled, cubed, and put my potatoes into water so they were ready to boil when it was almost time for dinner.  This was about as much as I could ready before hand.  So I took some more time to clean before the kids woke up from their naps.  In the chaos of the day, I had forgotten to eat breakfast or lunch.  Needless to say, by dinnertime, I was starving!

Jason (one of Michael's co-workers) and Ashley (Jason's fiance) came over for dinner.  Nate was here as well.  We all stuffed ourselves and still had plenty of leftovers!  :P  Avery took a while to warm up to our guests, but was eventually happily playing with Jason.  Connor was thrilled to be getting lots of attention from Ashley, who's got a little baby fever.  ;)  We all had a very nice meal and evening together.  :)  We don't do big meals like this often, but I'm excited we get to do them ocassionally.  It was so much fun to share our meal and evening with these friends and family.  :)  We are very blessed!