Thanksgiving 2009

Since this is the first year that The One and I are spending the holidays together, we are trying to figure out the traditions that we want to create for ourselves. It is very important to both of us that we spend the time together, regardless of what we do.

After talking it over, we decided that the best option for us was to stay home and cook Thanksgiving dinner ourselves, and invite our immediate families to join us. That seemed preferable to picking one family or the other to spend the day with. We didn't want to disrupt anyone's regular traditions, and knew that we may end up spending the holiday alone. But that seemed preferable to picking sides. My parents opted to spend the day with my extended family back in Michigan, but The One's family decided to join us. So our group was made up of myself, The One, him mom, his grandma, both his brothers, his brother's girlfriend, and Sissy.

My mom always says that she thinks turkey and all the fixings is a hard meal to prepare because there are so many last minute things you have to do, and you need the oven for so many things all at once. In order to try to minimize that right before the meal craziness, I tried to do as much ahead of time as possible, and I also managed to find recipes that allowed me to make some of the dishes in crock pots.

I'd never prepared a turkey dinner before, but I've done it with my mom several times. When the two of us have made the dinner, we were cooking for only 3 people. So we usually just cook a turkey breast, and don't make all of the traditional dishes. We also usually just cheat and use stove top stuffing, instead of making something from scratch. We usually do make standard green been casserole with mushroom soup, topped with fried onions, but I really don't like it and neither does The One. So, there were some thing that I did not have recipes for, or wanted to find a new recipes to try.

It did make me a bit nervous making recipes that I'd never had before when I was cooking for people, but I didn't have much of a choice. We began the preparations on Wednesday evening, and got up at 5:45 AM on Thursday morning to start cooking. We spent the morning cooking, doing minimal cleaning, and setting up the tables. When The One's family arrived, we put his mom to work mashing the potatoes since we hadn't managed to get to that yet. My grandma shared her secret with us a few years ago about making the potatoes ahead of time and then just putting them in a crock pot to keep warm. That was my original plan, but I fell behind schedule. I had plenty of time to cook and prepare everything, except I hadn't factored in time to get myself ready! Taking time out to take a shower and get ready put me a little behind schedule. Oops.

While we were finishing up last minute dinner preparations, The One took everyone else off to meet the dogs. We had just put them in their crates as everyone was arriving, and they were barking and howling up a storm. It was the worst I'd ever heard them! Sometimes they do that when they can hear/smell new people in the house, but it was insane how loud they were being.

Eventually, we managed to get everything finished and on the table. We ate and visited for a while, before The One's brother and his girlfriend had to head out to get to the gathering with her family. Everyone else left shortly there after, and The One and I began the long process of cleaning up the dishes. I think the thing I was most thankful for this Thanksgiving was my dishwasher!! I can't imagine having to wash dishes by hand!

Once we had the kitchen under control, The One headed off for a long nap, while the dogs and I headed off to my parents house to return some things I had borrowed and visit for a while.

When I got home, The One got up and we headed to the store to purchase some new things for the Christmas tree. I've been wanting a new tree skirt for a while, and I also wanted to change the tree topper and garland to give the tree a new look. I'd had the old ones for several years, and wanted something different for our first Christmas together (At least our first Christmas with the tree. We were together last Christmas, but I didn't decorate last year.)

When we returned from shopping, we set up the tree, and got started with the decorating. We got a few ornaments put on, and decided to save the rest for later. We then headed off to the computer to order an ornament for The One with his name on it to match the one that I have. While we were doing that, I started getting incredibly sleeping, so as soon as we were done we headed off to bed.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable holiday!