First Thanksgiving as Hostess

This year we had a small group planned for Thanksgiving.  Our little family, Grandma and Papa H and Baba.  So we decided to host it at our house.  We ended up adding Chris, Wendy, Kyle and Kevin which worked out well since we had a 20lb turkey!  I finally got to use my china that I've had since my wedding (4 days from now it will be 8 years), it was all still in its boxes.  Daddy took the day off work on Wednesday and we spent the day relaxing and we went to Target to let the kids look at toys and get some gift ideas.  We spent Wednesday evening getting a couple of pies ready to go. This morning Daddy took off to play football, Kayda and Dillon helped me set the table (Kayda was especially excited to use the pretty dishes) and Papa H came to get the kiddos so that I could focus on getting the turkey ready and in the oven by 10:30 (I got it in by 10:10 go me!).  At about 1:30 I peeked in at the turkey and the pop up timer was already up!  I stuck in a meat thermometer and the turkey was cooked WHAT!?!  So I called Grandma H wondering what I should do since it's the first turkey I've ever done on my own.  The I called Grandma G to try to figure out why it was saying it was done so early (I cooked the turkey in a roasting bag like she does, Grandma H doesn't use them).  Turns out that a 3.5 hour cook time was perfect with those bags...guess I should've gotten my time from the box NOT from the cookbook.  So I frantically called everyone to see if they could come an hour early.  They were all nice enough to oblige.  Chris carved the turkey, Baba helped me last minute with the mashed potatoes, Grandma H did the gravy, everybody helped! 

Growing up my family never dressed up for Thanksgiving but it was one of the occasions when we got to use the china and I LOVED it; now I get to continue that with my own china!  Here's our table before the hungry mouths descended.

The hungry mouths!

 After we all filled up on turkey, other yummies and pie!

Daddy snuggles with Kayda!

 Watching football.

 Carson getting Baba baby snuggles!

 Dillon playing "soccer" with his second cousin Kevin.

One last thing, tt seems like more often than not Grandma G ended up running water into the turkey to finish defrosting it that last little bit...that was another tradition I got to carry on this year!