The Eberly Journals: Thanksgiving

We had such a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday spending time with family. If you recall we had gotten our own turkey to raise and fatten up for this very occasion. Tuesday before Thanksgiving we loaded it up into Jenna's Kennel, which was quite a feat, and I took it to the butcher. It ended up being 26 lbs dressed! Wednesday night we put it in the smoker at midnight and then got up every 2-3 hours that night, changing the wood chips, giving more water, and brushing it with more butter and spices. It smelled ridiculously good by the morning.

We kind of guessed wrong on how long it would take to smoke and it was done pretty early (notice the time on the oven clock?) I carved it, poured a box of broth over it, covered it tightly with foil and put it on warm in the oven.

We ate around 12:30 and it was soooo delicious and moist. Best turkey I've ever had, hands down. I doubt we'll buy another live turkey next year though. It ended up being pretty expensive.
So this was for Ricky's family's get together on Thanksgiving day. We had so much food it was awesome. I insisted on taking a family picture before we ate because we never take family pictures. I think it turned out really nice!

The table looked so nice. The kids had their very own table.

Pop-pop and Katy:

We hung out for a while at their house. Ricky's parents had just gotten an air hockey table so the guys set that up and had fun playing with it. We had dessert and then went home, exhausted. I had just enough energy to set up our Christmas tree though. It's tradition to do it after Thanksgiving.

Katy thought it was really cool :P

Ricky's parents went through the attic to their new house and discovered that the previous owners had left a ton of Christmas decorations. Since their church doesn't allow Christmas decorations Alma let me take them all! I need to go around and take pictures of everything because it looks so festive here now :) This 6ft. Pre-lit tree was a part of that haul. We have a big artificial tree but it's not pre-lit and this one looks a lot nicer.

Maybe next year I'll convince Ricky to set up 2 trees :P

Friday morning we got up early and I started making my world-famous (haha, JK) fruit dip. This year I decided to do something a little fun with the fruit though and made a turkey!

I had seen a picture of this online and I was actually pretty excited about attempting this. I think it turned out pretty good :)

The kids loved it and I couldn't believe how much fruit they ate. I think maybe I should make fruit/vegetable animals every day :P

We got down to my parents' house around 1:00. We were actually the first to get there but everyone else soon followed :)

The kids always love all of Grammy's dress up clothes.

We always have so much fun when we get together. There sure is a lot going on!

More dress up:

More Pop-pop love:

We took some family pictures and then we all went for our traditional (I like traditions, OK?!) Thanksgiving hike. I forget the name of the park we went to but it had a nice playground that the kids liked a lot too.

Do you like her bangs?

Kira with Poppop

Grace and Asher.

I feel like I have a baby on my back a lot in pictures :P

Running in for hugs!

Dawn and Tommy:

Rick and Amy... oh, and that baby :P

Dad and Dawn:

The kids liked throwing rocks and sticks in the water.

It was a really beautiful day.

We went back to the playground and let the kids have at it for a little while.

Who's kid is this???

Aww, isn't she cute?!

We got back and Dad went out to get the traditional day-after-Thanksgiving panzoratti dinner. After we ate Mom enlisted everyone's help to set up her Christmas tree.