Happy Thanksgiving!

Our family Turkey Trot tradition was a bust ... again. 

However, I followed through and created my own "The Lonely Turkey Trot" 5k run.

This was my Lonely Turkey Trot Selfie at Mile 1:

Needless to say, I won first place!

I think I ran about 10:30 miles. It's hard to say because my phone froze right at the end so I couldn't check/stop the timer. Regardless, I was happy with the run. The hills in our neighborhood make for a great workout,

While I ran, Ben was at our ward's Turkey Bowl. The leaders were playing against the youth. I think the leaders won and it sounded like there were a few kids who weren't very happy about that.

After our physical activities of the morning were over, it was time to get to work.

Just before dinnertime I realized we didn't actually have a place for everyone to put their prepared food. Oops...

Luckily, we have friends who have lots of tables so we gave them a quick call and they brought some along. Crisis averted!

The food spread was awesome. And really, really good. That is the benefit to doing Thanksgiving dinner a little potluck style. You can focus on a few dishes and make them great rather than making 12 mediocre things. 

We sang the traditional Newman Thanksgiving song: Come Ye Thankful People Come and then we dug in.

There were stuffed mushrooms, mashed potatoes, a yummy salad, Apple Sausage Stuffing (my all-time favorite stuffing ever, since I don't especially love traditional stuffing), candied yams, green bean casserole, jello, and AMAZING cranberry sauce (made by Brother and Sister Newman). The whole works.

Tablescape:

Adult place settings:

Kid's place settings (which Dragon helped me prepare):

The delicious, gorgeous, tender smoked turkey:

My favorite part of Thanksgiving is sitting around the table with family and friends and catching up on what is going on in everyone's lives. 

It was so much fun to have everyone over for a few hours. Dragon had mixed feelings about the event. He'd be happily playing one minute and clinging to Ben the next, We know he was happy to have them over though because, when they left, he reached out towards them and said, "Friends stay!" 

Colt was a pretty happy camper. He just gnawed on his turkey bone and watched the people eat. I tried to give him some dairy free mashed potatoes but he was as unimpressed with them as he has been with all the other food. Pesky little guy!

I completely forgot to get a picture of the pie spread. It was a success again this year with 11 pies and 10 adults. It isn't actually Thanksgiving if there isn't a pie per person. 

A couple of the pies I made were S'more:

and Banoffee:

I had been craving a Banoffee pie since June when I had it at a friends house so it was a must for Thanksgiving.

I also made a Pecan and a Pumpkin Cream Pie. All of them were good. I'm surprised I like the S'more pie as much as I do. It's a great pie to have leftovers of. You just nuke it in the microwave for a few seconds and it's JUST like eating a S'more. YUMMMM!

Anyway, if you weren't here to celebrate with us, you were missed. And you are always invited to show up at our doorstep next year--just let me know you're coming!

For me, it almost wouldn't be Thanksgiving if we celebrated without our Seattle friends. I realized as we chatted that we've been eating Thanksgiving dinner with them for the past five years. A lot has changed since that first Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone found lots of things to be thankful for this year. I know we did.

Let the Christmas festivities begin!