Thanksgiving

This was my first Thanksgiving away from both my home and Jonathan's home . . . so I hosted my first Thanksgiving!! The very, very best part was that the Wrights came up from Florida! Tarah and Natalie stayed for a whole week at our house, and Dave joined them for half of the time since he has a real lawyer job now :) It was such a fun week to get to have them! We went to a frozen custard place two nights in a row to please my sweet husband who always wants a treat, and to share any yummy treats that he discovers! You need to click on this one to blow it up so you can see Neal's drool . . . love it! Baby Oscar and Baby Neal in their matching car seats and "bundleme"s We tried to make everything we could on Wednesday, so we basically just could just cook the turkey and orange rolls (courtesy of Kaylynn of course). We were pretty successful, so Thanksgiving day was super laid back. The boys went and played in the ward Turkey Bowl and had a blast. I left Neal sleeping at home with Tarah and Kaylynn and the kids and went and watched. The only other spectator there was my friend Tara (the one who has taken Neal's super cute pictures) and her baby Max, who is so much fun. He is always smiling! I had fun getting to hold and play with him some. Anyway, Tara took tons of pictures of them playing football, and when she and her husband were looking at them later, they found Jon smiling ear to ear in every single picture he was in . . . even if he was just running or playing in the background! I think he needs to do more things like that! I love watching Jon play sports. I love to tell the story of how the first Thanksgiving we were married, we were in Boise and we played with all of my cousins and family, and they called him the MVP and literally carried him off on their shoulders. It makes me laugh every time I think about it! Here are my favorite pics from this year: Tara's husband Jaremy, Jon, Dave, and GregNice hops! I'm pretty sure Jon pulled down this catch . . . Jon pulled Greg's flag right before he would entered the endzone for the (I think?) tie-breaking touchdown (Note the orange cone marking the endzone) Jon scoring the game-winning touchdown (quite dramatically!)Whew! He needed a rest after that . . . This is me putting in the turkey in the morning. I was determined to have a real, whole turkey. I got talked out of it, and then back into it. I'm glad I did, but . . .Yuck. My turkey was the only one I've ever seen that didn't have a pop-up thermometer (thanks a lot Costco), and I hadn't yet received the electric one Jon subsequently got me for Christmas (thanks Tarah for telling him to get me one, I use it all the time already!), so I called my mom to ask her how to check and see if the turkey was done. Sure enough, she busted out some pioneer wisdom and told me to shake the leg, and if it was loose, it was done. Kaylynn insisted on taking a picture of me shaking the leg, since we all were laughing our heads off! Kaylynn was brave enough to take out the huge turkey . . . I was too scared I was going to drop it . . . Go big or go home, that's what I always say! Hence the 20 lb. turkey for the 6 of us :) Dave was deemed the most manly and carved the turkey like a champ. My attempt at a fancy table . . . even though I didn't have enough matching dishes or a square tablecloth, but at least we had candles, right? I'll have to plan ahead next time! The food The pies . . . way weak by Fales standards (since there is only 3/4 of a pie per person instead of at least 2) but way delicious despite the small quantity . . . I'm the only one who would really eat a ton of pie, and I didn't want to do that by myself, so I held myself back on the baking. Our family's first thanksgiving together . . . I don't know how we never got a whole group shot, but since our friends were there, we felt so at home. These wonderful people have become our family, we are so lucky! Little content Oscar . . . Natalie trying to pull Neal off of his bouncer, even though he's bigger than her! Bathtime, I think they are both trying to figure eachother out Neal was nice enough to lend his room to the Wrights for the week, so I put him on the floor in our closet in his sleep positioner. He looked too cute, all innocent, not knowing how funny it is that he's sleeping on the floor!