Thanksgiving 2014

So this was saved as a draft...I guess it's time to post now that it's 2015!  Happy New Year, btw.



Besties! I figured it would be easier if Mateo had a friend while I was trying to prepare.
 

It was a great Thanksgiving! We celebrated with friends from the Netherlands. He's an American, so he knew what this was all about. In addition to them we had hubby's brother, his wife and their 4 children.

We celebrated on the Saturday after Thanksgiving to make things a bit easier.

I admit, I was a little nervous. Mainly for the turkey. I've never been responsible for it before. Here it is a task to even GET a turkey. You need to order it from a butcher a week (or more to be safe) before you need it. It will be a fresh turkey, so you pay more than in America.  Here frozen turkeys come to the stores for Christmas.

Mateo made the green bean casseroles.

Liora's birthday party was pretty stressful, so I learned from it and planned more ahead and did as much as I good the day before. I think all the food (apple cheesecakes, green bean casserole, pistaccio puff) was made on Friday. Saturday I put the turkey in and made some appetizers. Silly me started getting worried. I decided the turkey wouldn't be enough, so I put a chicken in the crockpot. TOTALLY not necessary! Good thing it was very cold that weekend. The leftovers were stored in the garage and we had the same meal for 4 days.

What else was on the menu? Our friends brought a lovely sweet potato dish and pumpkin pie. (I want more just thinking about it) My SIL brought enough mashed potatoes for 30 people. Oh, I guess I also had creamed corn and gravy, PLUS special cranberry sauce we didn't use last year. I think it was still good for another year!

The kids played quite nicely together and the 3/4 year olds went to bed, so we adults played Apples to Apples. Grand time had by all.