Thanksgiving

This year we hosted our first Thanksgiving Dinner for some of the Luszeck clan. It was so fun to have them come stay at our house for a few days. They arrived Wednesday afternoon, and headed to the Dinosaur park in Aliante to let the kids play. That night we heated up the hot tub and Jeff and I went in with all of the kids, which was a lot of fun.

Just as we were heading to bed I pulled the turkey out of the fridge to prep it for baking...only to discover that the inside of it was still frozen. Ugh! I couldn't believe it. It had been defrosting in the fridge since Sunday! Well, it took us until 12:30 to get it thawed enough to pull the giblets out, rinse it, and get it ready.

I set my alarm for 4am so I could stuff the turkey and put it in the oven. Since I was baking the turkey on the lowest rack in the oven, I put foil down on the bottom of the oven in case it dripped. Right as I was going to put the turkey in the oven I noticed a funny smell and realized that the foil had melted to the bottom of the oven! I tried to scrape it off, but some of it wouldn't come off no matter what I used. Hello - panic! Here I was alone at 4:30 in the morning thinking I had just ruined our brand new oven. And not only that - I was trying to figure out how we could pull off Thanksgiving dinner in 10 hours without the use of an oven.

Jeff's dad wandered in right about then and eventually we woke up Jeff. He pulled out the oven instructions (which happen to say "don't use foil to line the oven!") and was able to remove the bottom tray where the foil was melted. I was so relieved. I didn't know that it was a removable part. By 6:00 the turkey was in the oven and we had gone back to bed, but neither of us could sleep after all of that.

Fortunately the turkey turned out just fine. And with a lot of help from everyone - especially Linda and Emily, dinner was great. Steve had brought a turkey fryer with him, so we also had a fried turkey. That was my first time trying fried turkey, and it was delicious! Honestly I've never had better turkey.

Macie. Lexi loved having Macie stay in her room with her.

Lexi

Gavin. It was so fun getting to know Gavin a little better this trip. He usually doesn't say much to me or Jeff, but he was OBSESSED with the fact that I was pregnant. I can't count how many times he touched my belly or commented on it! We had several conversations about it. It was funny to see how fascinated he was by it. Here he is trying to make his own little belly.

Jeff doing his signature move - sticking things up his nose. This used to be the only way to get Gavin to laugh, and it started years ago at Disneyland with grapes. But a fork will work, too.

Thanksgiving night I thought we'd go see a movie or something, but we were all really tired. We just hung out and played cards, which was fine with me. That night Jeff, Linda, and Emily woke up at 2am to hit the Black Friday sales. We got some good deals!!

Steve brought their four wheeler and motorcycle with them. Friday morning we took the kids out for rides. They were in HEAVEN!

Emily and Lexi - the funny thing was Emily said the whole time they were riding, Lexi was watching Steve on the motorcycle and saying that she wanted to go fast like him.

with Papa

MAcie took Jackson for a quick little ride. I love how you can only see his eyes, but you can tell how big he is smiling under the helmet!