Thanksgiving #2

On Thursday Andy and I hosted the Mc. family Thanksgiving at our house. I spent all day Wednesday cleaning and that evening I prepped my food. Andy cleaned the bathroom, mopped, and worked hard on our downstairs bathroom. Thursday morning I finished cleaning and decorated the table with some fall decorations I borrowed from Cara. The boys had made a sign for the front door, place cards for the kids table, and handprint turkeys to hang in the dining room. They were so excited to have everyone over to our house! My parents showed up for dinner and I was so glad for them to come.

Everyone came over around 2ish. We had some appetizers since no one ate lunch. I made Jalapeno Popper dip and served it with toasted bread. Erin brought fresh fruit and spinach dip. Everything was yummy! I also made Pomegranate Punch which Wilson thought was lemonade and poured half of the juice mixture down the drain... :(

We had dinner around 5ish. I made sweet potato casserole, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. (Next time for the cranberry sauce I would reduce the pomegranate juice to 1 cup and the sugar to 1/2 cup.) I enjoyed trying new recipes for the holiday. With both thanksgiving celebrations combined I tried 5 new recipes!

The food was delicious. We also had turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, rolls, corn pudding, green bean casserole, and broccoli casserole. Everyone had a great time hanging out. The kids put on their own Thanksgiving Day parade in our basement which was adorable. It was too hot for a fire but overall it was a wonderful day of hanging out, food, and fun! With 9 cousins we have started putting all of their names in a hat. Each cousin pulls out 1 name and that is who they buy a christmas gift for. So the kids all traded gifts since we don't all see each other at Christmas. They were excited to get to open a present!

Sweet Potato Casserole

As requested, here is the recipe I use for Sweet Potato Casserole! Enjoy!


1 large can sweet potatoes, drained and mashed
3/4 cup white sugar
1/3 cup evaporated milk
2 eggs
1 stick butter, melted

Mix these ingredients together and pour into a 9x13.

Topping:
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup flour
1 stick butter, melted

Mix together and spread over top of sweet potatoes. Sprinkle with pecan pieces.
Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes, until hot and bubbly.

This dish is always a hit and now you can see why - it is NOT healthy at all!!

Thanksgiving Dinner #1

Tonight we had Thanksgiving with my side of the family at Cara and Jason's house. It was nice to all be together and the food was delicious! The kids had a great time together. I made a pumpkin pie and Sweet Potatoes with sage butter crumb topping, both new recipes. The pie was delicious. Probably the best pumpkin pie I've eaten before. The recipe was time consuming and I didn't know how it was going to turn out but it was good! Homemade pie crust and homemade whipped cream to boot! The sweet potatoes were not the brown sugar super sweet ones that we are used to. These were good, just not the same. It was just a recipe I'd been wanting to try for a while so I'm glad I did. I'll be making the usual brown sugar sweet potato casserole for Thursday.

Andy's side of the family is coming to our house for Thanksgiving this year! We're excited. Everyone is bringing different parts of the dinner. Looking forward to Thanksgiving Dinner #2!

Thankful Post

I have so much to be thankful for in life. I know I'm a few days late but I still want to take the time to share what I am thankful for...
* My husband who loves me and can fix EVERYTHING!
* Wilson- my hard worker and helper who is learning so much!
* Luke- my sweet tender hearted boy who has a great sense of humor!
* Ty- so sweet and I LOVE to kiss those soft, full cheeks!
* My mom, dad, sister, Maw-maw, Paw-paw, Carol, Dan, SIL's, BIL's, nieces, nephews, and all the extended family we have!
* Living close to a big part of our extended family. We won't give that up.
* A job so we can pay the bills!
* Our house- we have enough room to spread out and even have people over now!
* 2 cars that run! We're very thankful for our van!
* Andy's part time youth pastor job that allows him to stay home with our boys
* getting to take Wilson to the school where I teach!
* my small group
* our church
* the unconditional love that I don't deserve from my Lord & Savior, Jesus Christ
...and SOO many more!!!

Thanksgiving Pictures

Yeah...so...I didn't take very many pictures! I'm used to Andy taking tons of pics on my camera. But now he has a new fancy shmancy camera of his own! So he doesn't use my little Canon Elph anymore. So here are the ones I have! We had fun at Nanny B.'s in WV. I was spoiled by getting to stop at Frost Top for Root Beer travelling to and from Nanny's! Yum! We had a delicious turkey dinner and lots of relaxing.

Which holiday is it?

Driving down my street I get confused. I see pumpkins at one house. Then a couple doors down I see hay and gourds. The next house I see has a scarecrow and christmas lights (yes, both) and others have Christmas trees in the window. What holiday is it?! See how I get confused? I guess I'm the type who likes to finish one holiday before starting the next. You see, a few days after Halloween, when the pumpkins start to rot I throw them away. Then I'm ready to gear up for Thanksgiving. I don't have any TG decorations but we did hang a turkey on the door that Wilson made at school. So right now I'm celebrating Thanksgiving. Then probably this weekend we'll set up our Christmas tree. I guess I'm a one holiday at a time kind of girl. What about you?

5 Blissful Days!

We are so excited to be on Thanksgiving Break! Lots to look forward to. Today Wilson told me his ear was hurting around 4:40. I called the Dr. right away and they fit us in. I didn't want him to be sick over TG. When we got there I realized that his ear was red all around the top- inflammation. So anyway he has a bad ear infection but is now on antibiotics. While we were there I made him get a flu shot. That was rough. Me and the nurse pinned him down after trying to talk him through it and tell him about it. The nurse was really good with him. I told him he had to get one for Ty so we don't get him sick, Drs orders. Then after the crying and panic on his part while waiting for the nurse I finally used bribery - legos. I knew there was a $5 one that he wanted and I knew we were going to Meijer to get the presecription so that helped, a little! Wilson and I left the house around 4:45 and returned at almost 6:30. Had to wait for the prescription and everything. When we rushed out of the house to get to the doctor it was already time to feed Ty so Wilson and I took him with us. We got to the office and I was going to feed him in the waiting room. I picked him up out of his car seat and he had poop all up the back of his outfit. So W and I went to the bathroom and changed his clothes. Of course they called us back while we were in the bathroom. Then I fed Ty while we were waiting on the Dr. Sorry that is kind of out of order but I can't cut and paste on blogger! With 5 days off I'm looking forward to sleep! Time with the boys! Time with family! Board games! and yummy food! Have a great Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Feast #2

What a great time we had in WV! We went to visit Andy's Nanny along with Danny, Steph & family. We went back to our old tradition of heading to Nanny's house. We got there Wednesday evening and left Saturday morning. There were 10 of us in all, which is smaller than the usual 18 (going on 19 but don't worry, it's not me!). We had a lot of fun watching the kids run around, painting acorns and rocks after finding them by the creek and oak tree, hiking after some snow had fallen- just a little but enough for Wilson to eat it off of everything, the girls headed into "town" to shop at the Dollar General (that is all there is other than Rite Aid and Foodland). We watched a couple movies and played games. It was relaxing and nice. We had a great Thanksgiving dinner too. We missed Mimi and Poppy who were on a cruise. Erin, James and family were in KY and Katie and David were is FL. As we were eating Nanny said "Now we all need to go around the table and say something we're thankful for." She shared hers and Meg said she was thankful for sweet potatoes!! Then the table fell silent as we were all thinking of the MANY things we are thankful for and how could we possibly choose just one to share when Andy hit the nail on the head. He said, I'm thankful that none of us are sick. The rest of us chorused our "me toos" and reminisced UNfondly of last Thanksgiving--the Thanksgiving from HELL. Have I told you that story? Here goes...
For the past 3 years we travelled to a camp and rented a cottage- large enough to fit all 18 of us. We'd outgrown Nanny's house and this seemed a good option. Well last year we were all looking forward to meeting up at camp. We had lots of plans- good plans- like paintball for the guys, making turkey cookies, the annual play the kids put on, playing games, relaxing, hiking etc. A few days before we left for camp Wilson caught a virus. A bad one, with throw-up and other stuff. I think I caught it next, a very mild case- but we were feeling better in time to leave and thought everything would be okay. Boy were we wrong. By the time we left the cottage on Saturday the virus had spread through I think 15 of 18 people. It. was. awful. And of course it was our family's fault so I felt a lot of guilt. We shouldn't have gone. Each day we woke up the virus had spread to at least another person. I had to take Andy to the ER because he was so dehydrated. It hit him really hard. He had to get two bags of fluid. We spent a couple hours in the emergency room. It was just a horrible time. If you know me at all you know I live for breaks from school to be home with my boys (even though I love my job!). All I kept thinking was I can't wait for this weekend to be over so I can go back to work and get out of this nightmare. It really did feel like a nightmare. Thankfully our family still speaks to us! But here is something I don't know that I've told anyone- except those that were there- the poor girl who works at the camp and went in to clean the cabin after we left- yep, you guessed it, she caught the virus from just walking in the cabin. I mean we had already done some cleaning, emptying the trash, vacuuming, cleaning all the dishes, stripping the beds etc. And she still got sick. Talk about guilt. That was one awful, nasty virus that spread like wildfire. And during the horrible nightmare we couldn't leave because people were to sick to travel. It was the longest several days of 'vacation' ever.
Thank goodness this year was so great, it really makes Thanksgiving memories seem happy again! Maybe in a few years we'll laugh about last year's virus filled Thanksgiving- the nightmare- but not yet. No, not yet.

Pictures of this Thanksgiving to come!

Thanksgiving Feast #1

Sunday night the boys and I went over to my Maw and Paw's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Andy couldn't come because he had to work. We missed you babe! We had a good time and enjoyed great food. It had been a long time since we had all been together. We ate turkey, ham, stuffing, green beans, mashed potatoes, rolls and fruit. My mom also made a delicious cake- it was so good and chocolatey! I brought a big plate of food home for Andy and a big slice of cake. He ate it all last night when he got home.

My sister and Jason shared AWESOME news! They are hoping to adopt a precious boy named Silas from China. He turned one in September and has special needs. He is so cute! Their story of how this all came about is really neat. I'm hoping they'll start a blog and then I can just link you to and let them tell you! I'm so excited!!

Madelyn & Wilson and Luke & Caroline began dancing towards the end of the evening. It was so cute Jason took a video of it from his phone.