Happy Thanksgiving and Stuff

 Happy Thanksgiving! So grateful for the Catholic Faith, for my family, and friends. 

 And then there were 3. It was getting might close to my car. They made me jump every time I went around to get into my car. 

 We had a family Thanksgiving gather on Nov 18 with most of Aragorn's family.  I'm not sure why these are the only 2 photos I took and of course the lighting was bad.

 When we got home we were surprised to find there were 5 deer. I lost my parking spot.

 Can you see Aragorn in one of these?  Me neither.  Really, I do wonder about people.

 I had to get a bitter stock pot, because the turkey we were going to butcher was so big. It's not easy to find a local 80 qt. stock pot.

 For Cousin I's birthday, we had a play hour at Go Ninja (at our TKD school

Just before he fell on his head. (he was fine)

 Massive Thanksgiving prep on Wednesday morning. We got everything done well before lunch.

 Getting ready to butcher the turkeys.  The turkeys were very excited for this day, look how they huddle in line to jump into the pot.

 I spared you the head cutting details.

 Into the pot

 Plucking feathers

 Meanwhile we had some apples to use up so made some applesauce

 Look at this beautiful 38 pound turkey!

 Ok, sorry, one gross photo... gutting. When you think of the smells of Thanksgiving, this isn't one of them.

 Then the birdie was put into a brine of water, onion, lemons, spices and other things to soak until Thanksgiving morning.

 I had to run out to JCPenney to get some shirts for Aragorn because we always wait for the last minute to check his suit situation. He has a big x-ray show coming up and leaves on Saturday and I was not going out on "black Friday" There are so many sissy shirts for me. Why do men want to be sissies and women want to be manly? I don't get it.    However, I was able to find some great buys (with no crowds). I paid $200 for shirts, ties and pants after a $400 discount.

 I'm not sure Kili was overly impressed when this is what "dressing the turkey" was all about. I detected a bit of disappointment.

 Just barely got the turkey in the oven.

 Meanwhile there were 5 deer we had to grind up and make into sausages. Let the Thanksgiving festivities begin.

 If you are at our house and work needs to be done, you are put to work.  All hands on deck.

 Look at my beautiful birdie all ready to slice.

 The kids wanted to use some of the good china.

 We let the little ones have their own little fancy table.

We had cranberry hot drink, freshly made rolls, the best juiciest turkey ever, mashed potatoes, cranberry jello salad, jello cubes (made with grape juice), cranberry sauce, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, sweet potatoes with maple cranberry sauce, spinach casserole, corn from our gardne.  Oh. Yum. I forgot to take dessert photos, we had pumpkin pie, lemon cheesecake, pecan pie, chocolate pie and some just ate cool whip (huh?)

And, we got so eager to eat, we totally forgot to take a group photo. Woops.