Thanksgiving 2013

We celebrated Thanksgiving a few days ago, and before Thanksgiving gets lost in the shuffle of Baby Zach, Christmas, and family coming in town I thought I would blog about it. I can't say this was my favorite Thanksgiving ever. It promised to be so nice, so relaxing, and so delicious, but well, it wasn't my favorite. I got sick about a week before and have been coughing like crazy since then. You know what isn't awesome? Being 19,000 months pregnant and coughing... a lot- not a great combination. So I spent the morning in bed, cooked, we all took a nap, and then we put up the tree. Brian was so helpful, I feel bad that this may not have been the fun football filled holiday in our pajamas he had hoped for, but luckily Thanksgiving will come again.

We didn't have a "classy" Thanksgiving. There were no nice serving dishes, no tablecloths, cloth napkins, or center pieces... just simple. I think I like it better this way. It was good to gather together and talk about what we were grateful for, and it was so nice to be by ourselves so when I was feeling like... well like death... we didn't have to worry about a clean house, eating on time, etc.

We had turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, brussell sprouts with bacon and onions, candied carrots, stuffing, cranberry sauce, rolls, and of course pumpkin pie with whipped cream. Michael refused to eat anything except "potato ponds" or mashed potatoes and gravy and pumpkin pie with TONS of whipped cream (once he gave whipped cream a chance). I thought for sure he would be tempted by the carrots because normally he loves them... but not so much. We also made less food this year- wahoo! I think we actually cooked for 3 people instead of 17... we are getting better at this!

 Michael was ready to eat, he kept asking "Where's my food?" It was a little bit funny because he had so much food in front of him, but he didn't even have a plate... mean to laugh but still funny.

 He was placated with an apple juice (with no ice- he is specific about ice or no ice). He also had strawberries. he LOVES strawberries and gets them as a special treat this time of year (no really they are expensive),  Thanksgiving seemed like a great time for a treat like strawberries.

 Still waiting.

 I think this is when he noticed the potatoes. He really wanted gravy, I am pretty sure he hadn't ever had it before, but he had to have it from the moment I had Brian come and try it... I think he is a gravy fan now.

 See I was there too.

 He was informing me about his need for gravy. No really he was concerned we might not give it to him.

 and Brian was also there.

After doing the dishes, immediately following eating... because who can nap with a dirty kitchen, probably everyone but me, thanks for going along with that Brian, we took a nap (which was sad for Michael), and then we continued the tradition of putting up the christmas tree. Poor Brian had to do most of it this year because of my horrible coughing etc. But once the lights were up we decorated it together. We put our "special" ornaments or "christmas tree toys" as Michael calls them on first and it is so fun to see how many there are compared with the two we started with. When Brian and I got married we started the tradition of each person picking out a special ornament for the tree each year, you know to spice things up. Over the past 7 years we have gathered quite the collection, especially since we have had visitors for several years. The memories associated with these little trinkets as more fun than what we actually picked out- like the horrible cactus brian picked out one of the first years that started the tradition of him picking out the tackiest thing he could find. Or the cheesy ornaments we painted together the first year we were married. Now there are tons more of them, this year we added a manger scene (poppy), another airplane (grammy), a bottle cap santa face (zach), a lobster with a beach umbrella and sunscreen (brian), a train (mikey), a santa (ashley), and a squishy chocolate sprinkle donut (emmy). We are running out of space on the tree... but it is so fun, we love it, and we are trying to get more and more tacky each year... no theme except tacky. 

This year thanks to Brian's awesome grandpa we added a train to our tree. He sent Michael a Polar Express train... we watched the movie and read the book (more than once), so this was the perfect train. He LOVES it, we have tons of pictures of him opening it, I think that needs to be it's own post. So now we have a remote controlled train that goes around the tree... and whistles... it is awesome. No really it is pretty cool, especially with the lights off. 

So all in all we had a great Thanksgiving, despite the coughing and codeine induced grumpiness from me, it was great to spend the day together counting our many blessings!