Happy Thanksgiving!

Today we're grateful for all of our blessings! We had a wonderful day hanging out with our friends, Rachel, Brian, and their kids, and our family, including Nate and Jessica. Having Thanksgiving with the Parrish's is becoming an annual tradition! And even though we are so lucky to have Nate and Jess close by, we haven't seen them in at least a month, so we're glad that they picked our house to come to! Both Brian and Nate are two of Zach's favorite people-so he was really happy!

So, I had this great idea to have everyone dressed to take a family picture when the Parrish's got to our house. That way, everyone would be fresh (hair, clothes, smiles) and then we wouldn't have to worry about it later. Well, with the wind, the cold, and the swaying grasses-wait, weeds with stickers in them, the only thing that was fresh by the time we were done was the language some people were using! (I hate my hair, Jaymison is doing some sort of pee pee dance, and Zach kept making weird faces!) Next year, I'm going to do one of those family pictures where you just see the back of everyone. That way, we won't have to worry about smiling or whether everyone is at least looking at the camera. No one will like that either, though...who wants a picture of their bum?!? Anyway...While the photographer, aka Brian, did the photo shoot, Rachel put the green bean casserole together and finished the salad (thanks, Rach!). We took a little longer than I expected, and Nate and Jessica arrived while we were out in the field.

I was not as organized as I thought and this little adventure made the food timing a bit off...I realized that everything was pretty much ready, but yikes! The rolls still needed to be rolled out!! Luckily we had plenty of appetizers to keep us busy while we waited for the rolls to rise (thanks to Brian who rolled out the dough!) Jeff tried to help me with potatoes, but then I bossed him around too much, so he gave up and moved on to making sure that we had enough chairs. We finally got everything done- everyone pitched in to get drinks on the table, food on the table, people at the table. We had a great feast that included: turkey, potatoes and gravy, stuffing, rolls, cranberry sauce, strawberry pretzel salad, and green salad. We followed that an hour or two later with pumpkin pie and a delicious grasshopper pie that Jessica made (thanks, Jess!). That might have to be a new tradition!

We all have our expectations about what holidays should be like or include, so I hope that everyone had fun! We are so grateful for our family and for our friends, but we're especially grateful for Heavenly Father's plan and for the meaning that it brings to our lives!