Happy Thanksgiving!

On November 27th (the date which also happens to be my brother Jason's birthday ^-^), Dan and I celebrated our 1st holiday together as a married couple: Thanksgiving!! Actually, we were fortunate to be able to celebrate the holiday twice. On Thursday, we had turkey with the Smith clan and on Friday we feasted with the Weldings. Both celebrations left us stuffed and content and we enjoyed the time we were to spend with both sides of the family.

For the Smith Thanksgiving, I tried a new brussel sprout recipe (recommended by my mama), which was amazing! Basically, it's brussel sprouts that are sauted in bacon grease. I don't know how you can really wrong with that combination. They were so yummy, I cooked them again for the Welding Thanksgiving.
I also tried my hand at making one of personal Thanksgiving favorites, broccoli cassarole, for the first time. Although I added a tad to many Ritz cracker crumbs on the top, the cassarole came out great! (I had a lot to measure up to; this dish is a famous Smith tradition!). Dan was not much of a fan of the cassarole (too much cheese, methinks), but was nice enough to sample it for me :) I also made my traditional pumpkin muffins.



Although the bulk of the feast was put together by my mother (and, let me tell you, it was one heck of a feast!!), I had a good time cooking my three items; it made me feel very wifely, or something like that *^-~*

Dan and I brought most of the ingredients over to the Welding's house to cook so we could enjoy the Macy's Day parade together (we are still sans-cable TV) but I finished cooking the brussel sprouts at home after we saw Santa arrive in NYC before heading to my parents house (as a side note, I LOVE m kitchen).

We also took our first family portrait. Phoebe was a little to ADD to coporate fully, but we got a nice picture none-the-less:
(aren't we cute??)

We shared our Thanksgiving meal with my parents, Nana, and brother, Darren. We ate our selves silly and also spent a good part of the evening watching the reception on our wedding DVD since my Nana missed our dancing at the actual reception.

On Friday evening (after a long day of Black Friday baragain hunting for me, and work for Daniel), we headed across the drive way to celebrate our second Thanksgiving with Dan's parents, Leah, Jim, Ellie, Rose, and Keith. We skipped the turkey for Thanksgiving #2 since we had all eaten it at some point earlier in the week and Dan's Dad made an amazing roast. We had another amazing feast complete with fancy cupcakes/place holders made by Rose.

Of course, one of the highlights of the night was that we got to see Ellie again. She was a little bit fussy when Uncle Dan was holding her, but I was still able to get a cute picture. I can't believe how much that little one has grown already! She is absolutely adorable.

The night was also topped off with a game of Dutch Blitz, a sorting through of some beautiful teacups, and antics in the garage invloving Jim and Keith attempting to go under tha house.

Dan and I were very happy to be able to spend the holiday with both our families without having to split the time up. Looks like we'll be saving that tricky business for Christmastime (it's going to be an interesting conglomeration of traditions, for sure!). Anyway, it was the best way we could imagine to spend our 1st holiday together and I'm positive that the Thanksgiving season will always be a special time for us in the years to come.

And now that Thanksgiving's over, we can officially begin celebrating the most wonderful time of the year! Yay!!