Thanksgiving!

I did it! Or, I should say more accurately, we did it! The first Thanksgiving that I've ever hosted is over, and the food was all edible (except for the rolls, but we can't all be perfect, can we?) Thanks to my mom's guidance, the turkey came out wonderfully. I was pretty confident that I could handle everything else, but turkeys frighten me. I guess I've just heard too many horror stories about how the turkey ended up dry, or undercooked, or burnt to a crisp, and I didn't want any of that to happen. I had thought about brining it, but that just proved to be a much bigger deal than I wanted to take on, so we just put it in a cooking bag, stuffed it with onions, celery, and sage, and rubbed olive oil, paprika, and pepper all over the skin and shoved it in. Four and a half hours later, it was perfection. I stayed pretty basic with the sides. I figured rather than have 15 small sides and stress myself out, I'd make 3 or 4 things and make them really good. We had the old standbys of mashed potatoes and stuffing, and I added roasted vegetables (butternut squash, sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts, parsnips, and carrots), steamed green beans, and a cranberry salad. I was so worried about having enough food (for the 8! of us), that I made WAY too much. We have a ton of leftovers. I'm going to be eating turkey 15 different ways before I get through it all.

I think this Thanksgiving, while fun, was also hard for me. I remember the Thanksgivings when I was a kid where there would be 20 or so of us at the table at my grandmother's. I think having just my parents and my sister come down seem to really emphasize the fact that those days are gone. Plus, we just passed the anniversary of my grandma's death two years ago, and today would have been my grandpa's birthday. I think having all of those events come together this year has just really cemented it to me that those days are gone. While I'm happy for the memories, and I love making new memories for my own kids, there's a part of me that wishes for those days back. Life just seemed so much simpler then. But now I'm the one making the memories for my own kids. They won't be the same memories I had, but I'm excited to see what memories we'll make over the Thanksgivings to come.