The day after Thanksgiving was still Thanksgiving for the Dursos! We like to make our own Thanksgiving meal and put up the Christmas tree on the Friday after Thanksgiving. The day started with a French toast breakfast, and while Mama was cleaning up the kitchen, Allie and Dada started putting the tree together.
This was a good learning exercise for her. The branches are color-coded. Allie had a lot of fun putting the branches in piles and then putting them up on the tree.
And then after the tree was done, it was time to make the pie!
I love making pie crust, even though it doesn’t usually turn out pretty. And Allie had a lot of fun watching. She even helped!
After the crust was done, it was time to make the pie itself… always pumpkin for us! Allie thought it was really cool watching the mixer. After the pie went in the oven, Allie went to bed. And once the pie was finally done (it always takes a really long time to bake a pumpkin pie in our oven), it was time to put in the turkey! We started the turkey later than I wanted because I had helped with the tree. But I still thought in putting the turkey in the oven at 2, we’d be eating around 5:30. That didn’t quite happen.
I made my own stuffing and didn’t start it on time. Meanwhile, the turkey was done before I got the stuffing in the oven, and the stuffing was supposed to bake for one hour. Oops! We ended up just leaving the turkey a longer rest time and it was still good!
This is the part that Dada always looks forward to the most. We had a big turkey for him to carve! Almost 13 pounds! It actually worked out better with the turkey being out of the oven earlier, so there was space in the oven for the stuffing and green bean cassarole. While those baked I did the corn and gravy and then it was done!
As much as I would have liked to have wine in those wine glasses, it was sparkling grape juice. So remember how I thought we’d be eating at 5:30? We didn’t actually sit down to our meal until almost 7. But it was worth the wait!
Our menu:
-Turkey that we just roasted according to the package directions. I like to try something new each year. Maybe one of these years I’ll try something fancy with the turkey.
–Sausage Bread Filling, sooooo good! I had considered not making it because of the potential space conflict in the oven, but I’m so glad I did! I’m keeping this one for next year.
–Green Bean Cassarole, the usual, but it actually turned out better than it has in past years! I had missed on the recipe that the green beans were supposed to be cooked first! I made a lighter version that tasted just the same as the regular.
-White corn
-Mashed potatoes with gravy I made from the gravy packet.
–Garlic Buttermilk Biscuits, these are good, but maybe not for Thanksgiving. They didn’t quite match, but were a good addition anyway. This was what I tried new this year.
-Leftover cheesy potatoes from Thursday’s meal, made by my sister Jeni.
-Leftover cranberries from Thursday’s meal. Doug doesn’t like cranberries so I hadn’t bought any of my own.
-Welch’s sparkling white grape juice.
And later… pumpkin pie with whipped cream and egg nog for Dada and chocolate mint milk for Mama.
Allie was really looking forward to putting the ornaments on the tree. I thought she didn’t eat much for dinner just because she was more excited about the Christmas ornaments. It turns out she didn’t eat much because she was getting sick… but I’m sure the ornaments were part of it too!
We didn’t actually put ornaments on the tree last year. I don’t remember when we had our Durso family feast, but it didn’t include trimming the tree all the way. Then we never really got around to it and figured Allie would mess with the ornaments anyway. So we did the ornaments and then finished out the evening watching Mr. Popper’s Penguins. We only saw the second half but really enjoyed it, so much so that the movie wasn’t over until 9:30… and Allie was still up. Oops! So as a result, Mama got to sleep until 8 a.m. two days in a row!
And silly Mama didn’t take a picture of the trimmed tree. I’ll have to get one to post another time.
Unfortunately this morning we found out the real reason Allie didn’t eat much yesterday as she threw up a few times. Perhaps the episode Thursday was isolated or it was the start of this bug. It was just so weird how she threw up Thursday morning and then ate a ton of food later on Thursday. Then she seemed completely fine yesterday. But this morning she wasn’t, poor kid. We watched another good movie before naptime, Dolphin Tale. We have a free preview of movie channels this weekend! Then Allie slept almost four hours. She really wanted to eat, so we let her and luckily haven’t had any of it come back up. After a bath, some cheerios for dinner, cranky Allie and then lovey Allie, I think she’s over the bug… hopefully!
Life as we know it 