Milestones, Memories, and Mayhem: Happy Thanksgiving

With the focus on food, family, and friends, Thanksgiving has long been my favorite holiday.

This year, we were supposed to head to Bryan and Adam's for the day. Unfortunately, Bryan had to change plans last minute and head to family out of state.

With Daniel's high-maintenance tastes (I tried to think of a better way to say it, but the guy wants what he likes, how he likes it, so I think high maintenance is the best description), I had thankfully bought nearly everything for our traditional meal, and Bryan gave us the turkey and rolls he had. However... Bryan had planned to smoke the turkey, and being that his smoker wouldn't hold a full sized turkey, he had bought a center portion, and then purchased the legs and thighs separately. While I have cooked turkey many times, I wasn't sure what to do with pieces, so I did what I knew, and assembled one full turkey out of three different packages. My brother, Ryan, originally called it Zombie Turkey, which I thought was great, but later came up with an even more fitting title- FrankenTurkey!

I spent Wednesday getting as much food prep and basic house cleaning done as was possible, with Daniel helping out tremendously with a Walmart run. Though behind closed doors our house would not pass even our usual standards, I think we did alright for a low key Friendsgiving.

I was worried about getting all the cooking done with our crazy Potatoes under foot, but Adam came to the rescue! He had offered Daniel and I a night out before the guys leave, but we asked if, instead, he would come over on Thanksgiving and assist Daniel in entertaining the bro while I was occupied in the kitchen.

Closer to food time, we were thrilled when Matt and Andrea came over. It was a good break for them, because they have spent the week moving into their amazing new home (yes, I was their Realtor!). They brought their two pups, Jet and Lily. Zoey was surprisingly unsnooty to the visiting pups, until Jet found her bone. There was a small growl, but otherwise she was an angel! Lily added her own excitement to the day, having a tiny poop in the kitchen as soon as she got there, but luckily, Potatoes spotted it immediately and announced it in time for us to all jump to cleaning it up before he could grab it. It was so nice having a house full of friends, food, and fur! A perfect day in my book.

I failed to get any pictures of the amazing spread, or of us around the table being truly grateful for yummy food and even better company. I didn't think about the camera until we were all half into a food coma, looking through Black Friday catalogs.

We ate, watched football, took a stroll through the neighborhood; all the best parts of Thanksgiving!

Milestones:

Our family welcomed Adam, or 'Agho', as Alexander's Godfather this past week. While we felt this was a big request, and were hesitant over the level of obligation, Adam accepted with a clear sense of honor. We are blessed to have a such a strong figure to help us raise Alexander with God.

In true Agho fashion, Adam rounded up our Thanksgiving with a special treat for Potatoes. He brought him a few gifts, each of them with special meaning. A Yoshi doll to go with our Halloween costumes, a combo of the Little Critters books, because that guy is just like our little guy, and a yard marker to remember our football game fun. Potatoes is no fool. He immediately said, "push over," and began knocking into the yard marker. Crazy guy!