Turkeys North Ho!

Well, there is much to give thanks for this year.

Not only did we make it to week 12 with Baby Embryo, but Baby Celia is thriving, healthy, funny and sleeping sooooo good! We deserve and need some good sleep for the next 6 months before the sleep deprivation train makes it stop at Vollerville in June. We have our Elle pup, we have a warm house, we have cars that start up in the morning when it snows, Steve loves his job, J loves bartending, we have amazing families, and tis the season for chocolate and pie. Could things be any better!?

This year, we decided to go up for Thanksgiving to Petoskey to spend the day with friends. J was originally planning on doing a whole Thanksgiving dinner here for just our family, but once the pregnancy set in, exhaustion and stomach yucks made that sound like a bad idea. But we had a bird from Lubber's Farm, we had sweet potatoes, russian banana potatoes, pumpkins and brussel sprouts all from our garden waiting for the celebratory feast! So we decided to shake it up this year, and north we went.

Our partners in crime were Ann and John Stebelton with their children, James and Molly (and Issac due next month!), as well as Jen and her beau Drew. Thank goodness this was a collective cooking event! Were our moms and grandma's NUTS?! It is official. They were and they are! This was all of our first entire Thanksgiving dinners that we made on our own and after an entire day of cooking, washing dishes, washing more dishes, trying to keep our children happy, trying to time everything, and trying to frantically read recipes we have all decided our ancestors were nuts.

So Ann and J went to turkey land that morning. Looking good so far!




Jen and Drew were on potato detail using Voller garden spuds:






And Drew bravely made pumpkin pie from our pumpkins: Although the consistancy is not the same when you use real pumpkins we were all proud and impressed at the finished product. A new male domestic god in our midst? Yes! We could use some more!



Here the clan is working hard together! Steve and John entertained kids while Ann made cranberry sauce and J peeled sweet potatoes, which Steve later prepared into a yummy treat.



And at the last minute Ann steamed brussel spouts while J and Ann assembled crossiants and the children decided to find their chairs:



Steve began the honors of carving the turkey:



Everyone was poised in their chairs sniffling the fragrant air madly when oops! We suddenly realized that when the oven turned off, we had forgotten to check the temperature of the turkey before we took it out.

Here we were -- it was 4pm, everything was hot at the same time, the table was beautiful, the water glasses dripped slightly with condensation from the cold water, and we discover our turkey was not done.

HA!! Not too bad for a first try.

We ended the day sledding (Celia's first!!) and playing Quibble once our young ones were in bed.






We had a lovely time and we are grateful -- grateful indeed.