Thanksgiving a little late

Thanksgiving was a great time this year! I woke up and wrote this fun post about my top ten list of things I'm thankful for...it was really great...then I went to hit "post" and it all deleted. I was immediately NOT thankful to blog world for losing this post that I had worked at least 30 minutes on. Ugh...anyway, I was thankful - and I still am for so many things.

I spent Thanksgiving in Birmingham for the first time in a very long time, maybe ever...yeah, I think the first time ever. Matt was on call so I spent a lot of time with the Grimm family. Meredith and Lee were so sweet to open up their home to me and other residents plus Mere's parents were SO sweet to help with the food. Mr. Ellis made an awesome fried turkey and we had all the veggies to make the perfect Thanksgiving meal.

Matt got off work on Friday so we decided we'd do our first turkey that day. William and Marlee came over to help us eat our 15 pound turkey and watch the Iron Bowl. Here are a few pictures of what I had to go through (keep in mind alone b/c Matt didn't get home until later) in order to get this turkey thing going...

Nasty process of "brining" the turkey - I can't explain in words how nasty this was - thankfully Matt had cleaned the turkey out (barf) but the brine smelled horrible and the turkey was 15 pounds!!!!! A very heavy bird flopping all over my kitchen!

Um gross - I am proud to say I stuff the turkey's butt w/ apple, onion, lemon, and herbs per Matt's instructions...last time I will ever do that.

Checking the turkey...Matt was home for this part.

Sweet Eleanor was practicing her standing up while waiting on the food to get ready!

Finished product...it looked better than this prior to carving...the other side was cut at this point. It turned out better than I expected. To be honest, I had low expectations but it was very moist!

Matt had to go back to work that weekend and Jesse and Levi were having their second birthday so I went home on Saturday to celebrate with them! Here are some pictures of their second birthday:

Hurry up dad!!!!

They LOVE this guitar!

So, then I got to welcome home these two...

from their Europe trip! We were the obnoxious family taking pictures, ok I was the only one taking pictures...in the Nashville airport. We were so glad to welcome them home from a 10 day trip to Europe. They were both very glad to be home and going to their own shower and bed!