Double Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is one of my very favorite holidays.  Love it, love it, love it.  Even living overseas where it is virtually ignored we have learned to make it a very memorable day with our "family" on this side of the world.  Some might even say the challenge of making the traditional Thanksgiving meal makes it even more fun and special.  I might have even said that in the past although I can honestly say that this year, due to the other stressors in my life, I didn't love the challenge so much!   We've even started having double thanksgivings.  What?  Well, since it is just a regular day over here in the middle of the week, we usually put off our big meal with lots of friends until the weekend- Friday or Saturday, so a few years back I started making a special Thanksgiving meal just for our family.  So we get our very own Thanksgiving meal as a family and then we enjoy the fellowship of lots of friends for a second big, yummy meal.

Like I said, the meal preparation can be a little challenging.  Usually you can find canned pumpkin on this side of the world but not this year.  So I started with this...

which became this..

then this..

and finally this...

You can't tell from this picture, but the color was a bit off.  Still tasted yummy though- even Anabelle was a big fan!

Since Naomi was with me when I did our Thankgiving shopping, we ended up with an extra pumpkin to carve (never did one for Halloween).  Who knows when we'll get around to it, but in the meantime she was happy with drawing a face on it..

Naomi and Maddie helped set the table...

Anabelle was quite content with her Thankgiving meal of sweet potatoes (only veggie I can get her to eat these days...)

And always a favorite in our house- a ginormous pan of Memommy's rolls...

YUMMY!!

Here are the girls with all of the kiddos at our second Thanksgiving with lots of our friends.  Anabelle was so proud to be sitting up with all the big kids!

And one of our favorite parts of Thanksgiving- and the main reason we cook our own meal- leftovers!!