39 lbs of Thanksgiving

That's right folks. Caleb and I brined and cooked up 39 pounds of Turkey on Thanksgiving day and we have no left overs. Can you believe it? We will obviously have to do something different next year. Maybe we'll buy a third turkey and cook it the day after thanksgiving just for the 4 of us. That's worked in the past.

You are probably wondering what kind of folks we had over that would eat so much turkey. Well, that's my family. On Thanksgiving day we had 16 adults, 3 toddlers, and 2 babies converge on our place and fill our house with laughter and fun. Caleb and I set up 3 tables in our living room so that everyone would have a place to dine. Here's a picture of our mega table.



We had a great time hanging out and eating tasty food. And thanks to Lauren's great recipes, the turkey turned out fabulous, as well as the homemade cranberry sauce. (Honestly, I've never really enjoyed cranberry sauce until I had the homemade stuff. Thanks Lauren for the great recipe!)

Here's a picture of Caleb and my self grabbing a breather.

Here's my aunt Christin with Peter.

Here's my dad with Hannah.

And here's Uncle Do, the guy who took most of these pictures. (altho, technically he's my great Uncle Do...which means he's Hannah's great, great Uncle Do. Uncle Do, if you're reading this, we think you are great, great!)


All in All, Thursday was a grand success. But these folks only ate 21 lbs of Turkey. On Friday we took our second Turkey (the 18 pounder) and drove down to the Oregon Coast to get together with some of Caleb's extended family. Here's a picture of that crew.

We had a great time down there catching up with family (or in my case meeting family) and just hanging out. One of the highlights from that trip was our view on Saturday morning. When we looked out our window in the morning, we were surround by about a herd of about 100 Elk. (Caleb and gang must have scared them across the state. :-p) Unfortunately our Camera was in the car, but after they passed by our place we took some pictures. It was pretty darn cool.









And because of that Hannah learned a new phrase, "Elk poop" and "Elk poos." (the second one being the plural of the first) She is a really good spotter...and a loud one too. :-D

Hannah Reading

So just this week Hannah not only wants to be read to, but she also wants to read to you. Here she is reading one of her favorite books. I came in when she was already mostly done, so you only get to hear the last quarter of the book.

You probably didn't understand what she was saying...that is because the book is in Spanish. :-)

Here she reading another book. It happens to be a personal favorite of mine. The book is called, "My Mom is Excellent." And if you listen to Hannah carefully, you can sorta pick out the phrase "my mom is excellent". She says it at the beginning.