Thanksgiving with my turkeys...

There are quite a few things that I love about holiday weekends.

I love being able to eat the holiday meal early enough that you can then have sandwiches for dinner.

I love waking up on a Friday and thinking that it's Saturday, but then realizing that it is INDEED Friday and that Saturday is a whole day away.

I love when our little children let us sleep until almost 7 a.m. before they start singing Lion King songs.  Normally "I just can't wait to be king" begins around 6:15.

I love seeing random people at the gym on their days off.  They're always happy and chatty and one older man made the comment to me this morning that I must have eaten waaaay too much turkey yesterday, pointing to my belly.  Funny guy...

I love shopping Black Friday deals online and scoring sales plus free shipping.  I made one attempt to go to a store and waited in line for 30 minutes just because I had a $10 off coupon and then decided that I was an idiot and the three small items I had in my hand weren't worth it. 

And I love having my husband home.  

Now, some of you may think that I'm running a little bit on the crazy side by celebrating a holiday weekend when I'm home with my small offspring all the time anyway - but having your spouse at home makes things totally different.  We are big on routines and rarely stray from our breakfast - Y - lunch - nap - activity - dinner - baths - bed schedule and just to have that other person around to share in the insanity and be another grown-up with you makes it a holiday in my book.

Or maybe you think I'm crazy for attempting to potty train on the biggest cooking day of the year...

But I digress...

I had these big master plans of getting the house clean and most of my cooking done on Wednesday so I wouldn't be in the kitchen all morning Thursday and, like most plans made by a 23 week pregnant woman, they went to the way side as I decided to take a nap instead.  My loving husband brought home take-out Wednesday night and the girls and I started on the cranberry relish after dinner because I wanted the flavors to fester together in the fridge overnight.  

They were very excited to help and squeeze the oranges and watch it all come together and that really kicked off a string of my little cooks helping me in the kitchen.

Thursday morning, I got my bird in the oven and decided to take the diaper off my youngest.  We've been reading a book on the potty and she's been telling that she needs to go sometimes so we thought we'd roll with it...you know, on one of the busiest mom days of the year.  With the potty in the kitchen...

We were about 50/50 on the potty...much better than the first time we tried this with her big sister.

I had debated on just getting a pie at the store, but I had all the ingredients on hand and figured I was just lazy not to make one myself.  Now, I had never made a pie crust before, so it was a little bit of an adventure, but it came out edible, even if I'm doing most of the eating on it. 

Battling for prime counter real estate...

I let them play in the flour and roll out the remnants of the crust dough after I was done with it.  This appeased them for a good 20 minutes, until I had to kick them out to do the dishes...which led to a good 20 minute double tantrum.

We had Thanksgiving for lunch and ate around noon, which was a record for me and I was pretty proud of the spread.  I had one store bought item - the rolls.  And here you can see that it was all my children could think about.  We don't have rolls that often and I will have to tell you one day about how I gained 60 pounds in my second pregnancy AND made my daughter a picky eater all through the influence of having rolls with dinner.  But that's another post.

Long story short, the girls snubbed their noses at the plates of yummy Thanksgiving food and ate rolls.  And Elizabeth ate a little cranberry relish...I would say since she made it, but she also assisted with the sweet potatoes and pie and green bean casserole and wanted nothing to do with them.

Yes, I said pie...weirdo...don't worry, I ate her piece...so it wouldn't go to waste.

Scott shredding the turkey, under close supervision by the Master Drooler himself.

Amazingly, the scent of turkey must have had enough of a sleepiness effect to make both girls take a three hour nap, and I joined them for about a third of that.  Scott spent the quiet time doing manly things in the garage, like getting down the Christmas bins and putting together a shelving unit.

Out cold.

So that was our day and we consider ourselves very blessed to have been able to spend it together in a warm house with plenty of food to eat.  We hope you had a wonderful one as well.  Enjoy the rest of your weekend!