Thanksgiving!! We Survived!!

This year for Thanksgiving we had Cliff's entire family (all 22 of us) up to Hume to celebrate, this is a tradition Cliff started about 10+ years ago. But, this is our first time having everyone up since we've been married. The last time they were all up was 5 years ago when we were just dating, we tried to have everyone here 3 years ago, but it didn't work out with the families schedules. So this year we decided to bring back the tradition. Now of course this year is the first year that I've been a part of the family, so there are some different expectations with a single guy hosting and the fairly new sister-in-law & daughter-in-law trying to figure out the family traditions. I think overall we did a pretty good job!

Here is a picture of the whole family out by the lake. Everything was good and most importantly I think the family was impressed, my husband said that I "rocked Thanksgiving Dinner" but what else is he going to say right? I had some great cooking advice from my wise brother-in-law who is king of great Turkey and Stuffing, the two main things you want to be great right? I brined the Turkey and we roasted one and BBQ'd the other. They both came out very good and very moist! And Cliff did a great job carving it (after he told his brother that he could take his judgemental looks into the other room while he carved)!!! Way to go babe!

So here was the menu for the day:

Thanksgiving Breakfast

Egg & Sausage Casserole

Cinnamon Streusel Coffee Cake

Cranberry Coffee Cake

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread

Fresh Fruit

Thanksgiving Dinner

Turkey

Sausage & Apple Stuffing

Mashed Potatoes w/Gravy

Sweet Potato Casserole

Green Bean Casserole

Salad w/apples, cranberries & feta

Variety of Rolls

Dessert

Pumpkin Pie

Apple Pie

Pecan Pie

The kids table: I made them a Turkey Centerpiece with feathers made out of construction paper so they could write what they were thankful for, I read a few after dinner. One child had written "Barack is my Hero", good to know they are thankful for so many things! I'm not sure that went over very big, but that's okay I'll keep trying.

This is the Adult Table, our camera had been outside so the pictures I took came out blurry, this was the only one of all the cameras. But at least you can see the table.

We have had a good weekend, full of activities and of course plenty of food. I am a little tired and ready to jump into Christmas decorating, shopping and planning. But, I still need another day or two to recover. I had everything listed out to do for the last week or so and tried to make it where I only had a couple of things to do each day, until Wednesday and Thursday of course. For the most part my plan worked well. I said we were going to eat at 4:00pm and I think we sat down about 4:45pm. Not too bad, what can I say it's in my gene's!! I'm not sure we've every had a family meal on time for any Briner family gatherings!