So, we did it! The husband and I survived our very first family Thanksgiving day feast! Our first visitors, my father and brother, arrived separately on the Tuesday before. My father arrived in San Francisco, and my brother in Sacramento... landing an hour apart from each other (it is a 35 min drive to SAC and a 1hr drive to SFO)! Nonetheless, thank goodness for his and her vehicles and we split up to pick them up. 5 more people, hubby's aunt, uncle, brother, and 2 cousins (one of whom was 6), all arrived the next morning.
That afternoon we decided to take the whole clan, all 9 of us to the flightline and introduce them to our respective airplanes.
We then went out to eat and crammed everyone into a place in our home. That night 3 more people came, hubby's cousin, her boyfriend, and her 6 year old daughter.
That night I had trouble sleeping. I was so worried about cooking the 13lb turkey we purchased and organizing cooking everything else!
The morning of turkey day we started it off with some banana nut pancakes and then started COOK FEST 2010. We took the "thawed out" $7 Safeway bargain turkey out of the refrigerator only to find that it was not quite as thawed as we'd hoped. Long story short, after about 2 hours of waiting for the turkey to thaw and for hubby's aunt to bring us the celery, onion, and carrots I forgot for the stuffing, we finally seasoned, stuffed, and shoved the turkey in the oven.
For appetizers/lunch I prepared some deviled eggs and sweet potato fries as well as a round of sourdough to dip into our 1 year old garlic and rosemary olive oil. The trimmings to the turkey included a maple, pineapple, and cherry glazed ham, stuffing, my mac and cheese casserole, hubby's green bean casserole, dad's sweet potato pudding, auntie's fruit salad, my mashed potatoes/yams, sweet corn, and dinner rolls. YUM! Lastly, dessert consisted of my pumpkin spice cookie cakes, apple pie, pumpkin pie, and vanilla ice cream.
Our lovely main dinner table. BTW, this was brand new, purchased via a seller on Craigslist!
By this time it was about 5:30pm and everyone was staaaaarving. We didn't have much time for a full group picture.
Gorgeous!
The next day we took everyone on a very hectic trip to San Francisco - needing two vehicles. Ugh. Nonetheless, we got some gorgeous pictures out of it.
Cousin and boyfriend :)
Aunt and Uncle :)
Father and I :)
Brother in law
And one of my favorites of the day.
I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving, as we sure did.
