An Unconventional Thanksgiving

I know that Christmas is right around the corner, but it's not too late to write about my Thanksgiving is it? This years Thanksgiving proved to be quite different from years past. Typically Greg and I visit a family members house for Thanksgiving. But not this year! Instead my sister and her family drove all the way up to Colorado to help us work on our house. And boy, did they help!

I tend to get the impression that most families spend Thanksgiving getting together for a huge lunch and then the men retire to the living room to watch football while the women clean the kitchen. Well, not in this house! Amazingly enough, neither my husband nor my brother in law, Andy, are sports fans! Which is a good thing since the only working TV was in the nursery/temporary guest room. When we bought our house, since it was a foreclosure, there were no appliances. And although my husband bought a microwave and oven when he went on his big Home Depot trip, we didn't think we would have any of them installed by the time Thanksgiving rolled around. The week before we went ahead and unpacked the microwave and had it downstairs in a random room (it's one of those "hang over the stove" kind in case you're wondering). So when I prepared my menu for the week (yes, I am that girl) I was forced to come up with a creative Thanksgiving meal that didn't require a stove.

Let me backtrack a little. Since I now work from 2-6 every evening, I'm starving by the time I get home. Keep in mind this preggo is used to eating dinner at 5:00. So, for the last three weeks, I've been cooking with my trusty crock-pot during the work week. I even purchased a new crock pot cook book, and believe it or not, there were several recipes in it for cooking a turkey! I settled on one that I thought sounded pretty good, and it only involved a turkey breast. Sounded simple enough! I also decided we'd eat cranberry sauce (from a can, but who cares, right?), Country Crock microwavable mashed potatoes, and a new coleslaw recipe I learned from my father in law's girlfriend the week before. The meal was complete with a frozen cream pie from Edwards. There! Thanksgiving from a crock pot and microwave!

Now, if there is one word for me to describe my husband, it would be a toss up between "workaholic" and "the energizer-bunny". That may be more than one word, but you get the picture. I also tend to tell him he's a slave driver. Getting a better picture? Since we had so many people coming to visit us and help us work on our house, the workaholic in him went into overdrive. The great thing is that my brother in law is the exact same way! My family had arrived Tuesday night and by the end of the day on Wednesday Greg and Andy had ran the water line for the fridge and the new gas lines for the oven. (I discovered while living "life on the road" that I absolutely love cooking with gas! And my husband was awesome enough to surprise me with the gas stove I really wanted, even when I told him I could live with electric! Gotta love him!) Once that was completed my sister, Sheila, and I tackled putting new plastic shelving liner in all the cabinets and drawers. Then came the joyous task of trying to unpack and organize our kitchen. After I went to work they worked on some overgrown yard work that the neighbors commented on. It wasn't exactly on our schedule, but it did need to be done. Don't get me started on our lack of a housewarming from our neighbors.....




When Thanksgiving rolled around, my sister and I had to make a quick Wal-Mart run (again, something I've never done on any Holiday). Since we officially had a working oven, I decided to pick up some rolls and decided why not make "real" mashed potatoes?! Since the guys aren't sports fans, lots of work took place in our house that day! Andy painted our office and most of the upstairs hallway while Greg textured the wall we had to strip wall paper from in the living room and the dining room. Once the texture was dry, they primered those walls and painted the ceilings. Sheila was a trooper and brought load after load of "stuff" from our trailer into the basement. By the time dinner rolled around we were all pretty hungry....and thankful that our Thanksgiving dinner from a crock pot turned out pretty darn good if I do say so myself!





Unfortunately for us, no shopping was done on Black Friday. But, the guys painted the living room and the dining room, and hung new lights in the living room while my sister continued to bring in load after load of "stuff" from the trailer. Believe it or not, it's still not unloaded all the way! (And to think that a lot of people don't believe anyone can actually "live" out of a travel trailer!) Despite all the work going on, the kids were pretty good about entertaining their selves. Greg turned the box that our oven came in into a "Box Castle" which also occasionally turned into a coo-coo clock and a choo-choo train. They also had a blast playing on.....the stairs! Who knew!



All in all it was a great Thanksgiving week! The gang left the next day and I was so sad to see them go. THANKS SO MUCH FOR ALL YOUR HELP GUYS!!! WE LOVE YOU!!!!