Thanksgiving and Grandma visit (November 2013)

A little over a week after our new baby joined our family, Thanksgiving occurred. This is my favorite holiday and usually I am planning, shopping and cooking for several days. This year I knew I would just be enjoying the food and company of friends. One of my dear friends here invited us to join them at their home.

Okay I did make my favorite Fudge Pecan Pie. And it took all of my energy.

Car ride!

Let's go eat!

Sweet kids table. Trainboy was ticked to have to sit there while Dinoguy was at the "big" table.

Some of the food.

Fixitman did brine and roast a turkey, while my friends' husband smoked a cajun turkey. The cajun turkey was spicy but delicious! They also made a new version of green bean casserole that was actually delicious (it involved making the fried onions and cream sauce from scratch.) We also introduced them to Fixitman's famous macaroni salad. There was plenty of food and lots of good conversation.

My mom came to help me after baby's birth and while she was here we took some pictures, my goal being to have a decent family photo for Christmas cards. Mom had a new camera she was playing with so it was fun for her too I think.

My mom & I. People tell me now that we look alike.

My 5 boys

Family Photo, pretty good!

Silly family photo

Another fun one

Mom also had fun playing grandma and doing fun things with the kids. One of the things my mom loves is nature. She has become a master naturalist in South Carolina and loves to photograph wildlife. While she was here she took the kids on a couple of nature walks and installed a bird feeder for the kids to be able to watch birds and taught them the names of several kinds of birds.

She also let Princess paint her nails and surprised Grandpa when she got home. This is a picture of Princess peeking through s door knob hole at her.

It was wonderful how much support I had from friends and family after baby's birth. I was able to rest and recover for weeks without having to go anywhere, it was fabulous.

Gratitude and Thankful List 2013

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because I love food, family, and gratitude. I love making delicious food and eating delicious food. I love spending time with family making memories! I also love being grateful. A grateful heart is a happy heart. I have learned that when I fill my life with gratitude everything seems better.

With that in mind, I am sharing a list of some things I am grateful for this year. It's going to be sentimental, so don't read if you aren't in that kind of mood right now.

1. My wonderful husband and children. I have the best husband in the world for me. He is supportive and loving and caring and wonderful. I also have wonderful amazing children that I feel honored to be trusted with in raising.

2. The ability to visit family and have family visit. Modern means of swift travel are amazing! I am so glad we have gotten to see so much of our extended family this year! Those we haven't seen, I hope we see you soon!

3. My amazing body that is no longer swollen and pregnant. It is amazing because I was able to grow a baby, give birth to a baby and now I am quickly recovering. What a miracle and blessing our bodies are!

4. Supportive wonderful friends near and far. I am a lucky girl with so many caring wonderful women around me that bless me with their love and friendship.

5. Hot water and running water. I absolutely love the luxury of a hot shower or warm bath and they are so easily available to me. It is a miracle every time.

6. All the firewood my dear husband chopped that helps heat our home and keep our heating bill low when it is cold outside. We were blessed to get access to the wood for free and then that he is strong and able to chop it for our use. It smells fabulous too.

7. The knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ and that my Heavenly Father loves me. Knowledge of the purpose of life on earth. What a blessing this knowledge is to me! I am starting to really love reading the scriptures too.

8. Chocolate and other food. I love chocolate, it is so tasty! But I am also so grateful to live in a land of plenty where my family has never had lack of food. I also love fresh pineapple, grapefruit, apples, cheese and bacon. Yum.

9. Freedom to have opinions that are different. Freedom to worship God in my own way. The privilege and responsibility of voting for our government leaders. Freedom to work toward changing and improving my life and that of others on things that are important to me.

10. Work for my husband and myself. The blessing of plenty of work to do and the ability to work. My husband has a job that keeps him busy, pays him and he likes it! This is a huge blessing. I have two small part time jobs that pay money and then one large full time job as a mother and home executive that is much harder but pays in much higher dividends. Our life is busy and happy.

Well, that's enough time spent on that. I know I could make a very long list of all sorts of things but thinking about these is a good start. Happy Thanksgiving!

Gratitude and Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving, I am extremely grateful for the knowledge that I am daughter of my Heavenly Father. I know that he loves me, cares for me and answers prayers. I know that no matter what trials we face, he is there to help us, to comfort us, to guide us and to love us. Though my life feels like it has been turned upside down the past few months and things are very different here, it has been okay. I have felt at peace and that I can handle these changes. I attribute this to the fact that my identity as a child of God is an eternal identity that cannot be changed or taken away. It provides perspective. I know who I am and why I am here on earth. And it has made all the difference.

Thanksgiving Thankfulness

Fixitman and the bird.

Part of the table and some of the food

Another view of the table and food.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I love the food, I love getting together with family and friends, I love planning and cooking the food. I love thinking about thankfulness. We had a lovely Thanksgiving this year with Fixitman's sister's family and friends. It was more of a potluck, so we didn't cook as much as we normally do. So we're cooking more tomorrow! :) Mmmm...Mmm...pie...(and cheesecake!)

Fixitman improved upon his turkey frying technique and the bird was awesome. The brine recipe was a winner and not over frying the bird made it super juicy as well. He also made his fabulous macaroni salad. I made my favorite sweet potato casserole, pumpkin cheesecake and Grandma's fudge pecan pie. I also tried a new variation on cranberries - a cranberry dipping sauce for the turkey from Alton Brown that was awesome. I want to bottle the sauce and put it on sandwiches year round it was so good. Fixitman's sister made their family's traditional orange rolls, and there were a ton of other delicious dishes from others, including cornbread dressing with giblet gravy, a first for me (it was good!)

Trainboy jumps at a rare time when there aren't 12 kids on the trampoline at the same time.

The boys had a great time playing with their cousins and making new friends. I seem to not think of snapping good pictures of them as much as I should when we visit, I guess we're just having a good time.

Dinoguy practices his kung fu

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, in case you didn't know. :) This thanksgiving was a whirlwind of entertaining visiting family and taking them to some of our favorite new places in Texas and cooking up a big Thanksgiving Dinner. (Our best yet I think.)

I finally added pictures! :) We have Aunt H1 pulling Aunt H2 on the old plow at the Arboreteum frontier town, manatees having lunch at the aquarium, H riding on Grandpa on the way to the Aquarium (he only wanted Grandpa to carry him most of the way, very cute!), and L & H playing lacrosse with Uncle M & cousin R.

We took my family to the Arboreteum, to see the Chocolate tree exhibit and learn about my favorite food group, and then picnicked at their Texas Frontier Town and explored the garden. Later we went bowling and the boys loved it! I was very surprised.

We took them to the Aquarium (the jungle aquarium according to my kids), which was PACKED (Oh how I hate sharing it with people out of school...its so much more fun to be there alone while everyone else is in school!) but we had a good time. It is an awesome place. The free flying birds were a bit more crazed, maybe b/c of how many people were there, and flew right over our heads several times, causing us to duck. The bird carrying the pretzel bag was amusing too.

Thanksgiving dinner was awesome and when I upload pics I will update my food blog all about it. We had 2 pastured, free range turkeys, one fried and one roasted traditionally (which was the better bird IMO). We had pies, cheesecakes, salads, sides, soups...I really love making thanksgiving dinner and it was great fun this year too. Plus the fridge has all my favorite foods in large quantities in it, so not much cooking for a while!

I have many blessings to give thanks for, and today's lessons at Church on Gratitude were uplifting and inspiring. Thanksgiving the holiday is really about the food feast for me, so I feel better since we should have gratitude in our hearts all year round! :P

Hope your thanksgiving was awesome too!

Horse riding and other fun things

We went to a park day with friends and also to their house to ride their horse. H wasn't really interested, but L was excited. He was very excited, as were many of his friends.

DH bought me a punching bag on Craigslist, it is a lot of fun. :) What a great way to relieve tension! The boys also like to beat on it, I usually only get short turns.

We were given a train table by a friend, and H loves to play with his trains on it. He is getting to the point where he'll leave them without a fit, but when it was brand new? Woo!

I spent last week doing a Weekend Cookbook challenge, which you can read all about on my food blog: Duff ABC's. During that, we had a minor crises when the microwave rice cooker I have decided to try and start a fire.
Several days of cleaning, spraying and airing out later and the carcinogenic smell is mostly gone (except for the shelf that the microwave was on, and I think it will need repainting. (What the rice cooker originally looked like: here)

I am so excited for Thanksgiving! We are having my family down to visit and DH's sister's family too. I love cooking for a crowd and preparing a big thanksgiving feast! It is a great holiday!

Not just for the food though. I am really blessed in my life with a wonderful DH, amazing wonderful kids, a nice place to live, plenty of food to eat, the opportunity to stay home and be with my kids, a big & loving family, a car, DH's good job, the gospel in my life...when I go to count my blessings, they seem innumerable. I love thanksgiving, for the chance to remember all these blessings and see how great life is.