The Weekend Ahead

I had a good Thanksgiving. It started at 8 am. I made homemade cranberry compote (a first for me) using a recipe one of the ladies at work brought for our potluck, then added a little bit of my own creativity. It had granny smith apples, orange zest, orange juice (and I added chunks of oranges), golden raises, and chopped walnuts. It was tart and good. I set that in the fridge to chill and started on the dressing and stuffed the turkey (I use the turkey bags so I didn't need to start it just yet), I peeled potatoes, made my Waldorf salad, then put the turkey, and the squash in the oven. By this time Joleesa was up so we headed to Fred Meyer to pick up a couple of things that I needed and do a little shopping of course (in Wisconsin I did Kmart and they had gifts to the first 100 customers on Thanksgiving day-not here). I was surprised how busy it was. Jenna met up with us at Fred Meyer. Joleesa actually found some things to put on her bedroom wall. Here is my daughter, 19 years old and bare walls as she never bought anything for them and I had no idea what she would like. We're going with the theme "Live, Love, Laugh". We bought a variety of things that say that on it. So we'll be fixing her room up for Levi ~ you should feel special Levi ~ smile. Then back home and the girls set the table, made the punch and started dishing things as they were done and I continued the cooking. The day at first started out kind of lonely, thinking "I have 3 girls and not a one of them were in the kitchen with me". But in the end we put it all on the table at 3 pm just as was planned. I love it when I can make that happen and have everything hot. Our company arrived about 10 minutes late but no problem. We quickly overate, they then went to the living room and watched Wall-E while I cleaned up (Joleesa took a nap, Jenna and Jody helped out some) and the kitchen was put back in order. Then about an hour later we had some Boston cream pie that our company brought. Josh and Jackie showed up for the basketball game and quickly fixed plates of leftover (they were working). The four left for the game, our company left, Jody went to lay down, Jessa got off work, fixed left overs, I had some of the delicious pumpkin pie that Heather Adams made and brought us (it was so sweet of her), Jessa took off to spend the rest of the night on the phone with Levi while I had a relaxing evening watching The Ultimate Gift (a great movie that I saw last year, but didn't remember a lot of it). The girls got home from the game, Jessa and Jenna left for home, Jody for work, Joleesa to bed and eventually I went to bed as well.

A very different Thanksgiving then what I'm use to but yet a good. I am sooo thankful for my family.

Now I have a weekend of shopping and getting my hair done. Yippee!!! I love to shop and find those perfect gifts. No gift cards from me ~ smile (inside joke).