Thanksgiving Tradtitions

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. The day before Thanksgiving it is our tradition to go to our church's Thanksgiving dinner. It's huge and delicious, and I don't have to cook. Well, usually I don't. This year I volunteered to cook one of the turkeys. After reading a fabulous sounding recipe at My Kitchen Cafe I really wanted to try my hand at a Thanksgiving turkey. I have a made a few turkeys in my lifetime, but none of them were something to write home about. With Katelyn as my assistant in the kitchen, we prepared the turkey according to the recipe. The most unique part of the recipe we used was the final step. We coated a brown paper bag in butter and tented the turkey in it. After two and half hours in the oven, out came the moistest, juiciest, most flavorful turkey I can ever remember having. Success!!

"Painting" the paper bag with butter

The Turkey Tent

One Delicious Turkey!

On Thanksgiving, we usually go to my dad's house for dinner and in return we cook breakfast Thanksgiving morning. It has to be cinnamon rolls and breakfast casserole. Yumm. It really just isn't Thanksgiving morning (or Christmas morning) without them. We spent the rest of the morning laying around on the couch watching the Macey's Parade and flipping through Black Friday ads. It was perfect.

Last year, after Christmas, Ben and I bought new LED lights for the outside of the house and he was really excited to the try them out. So, we bundled headed outside and spent the afternoon putting up Christmas mights. Ben did a great job, and we love how cheery our house looks when we drive up!

Kate and Ben hard at work

Ben and the ginormous ladder

After Josh's afternoon nap, we loaded our share of the Thanksgiving feast into the car, grabbed this kiddos and headed to my dad's house. Dinner was delicious, and we were all too exhausted to even make it to dessert. It was a great Thanksgiving!


It also tradition to go shopping on Black Friday. I was up an ready to head out the door to Walmart at 4:30. While Ben and the kids slept, I was armed with my shopping cart and a list of great deals to find a store that was complete chaos. I ran into fellow Black Friday shoppers, Jessica and Anita and we compared lists. After Walmart, I took on Target and AC Moore. It was worth it, I scored some good stuff at great prices.

Our last Thanksgiving tradition is to decorate our house for Christmas the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving. We like to enjoy the decorations as long as we can. What can I say... I love Christmas!

Our sweet girl by the Christmas tree