Happy Thanksgiving

There's nothing better than being together with your family for Thanksgiving...and this year, we were all together.


It was such a perfect day, and it started out exactly right; cool and cloudy with light showers. Turkey football players all over the valley (especially missionaries) had so much fun playing in the mud. For us, it felt like a taste of home-true fall weather. We were favored with bursts of sunshine and warmth between that wonderful rain through the rest of the day. Taylor got up really early to exercise with the missionaries (they've been doing that around 5:00), but afterwords felt too sick to go play football. He stayed sick the rest of the day and was our only Thanksgiving causality. I think there's a picture of him laying on the couch in a blanket watching all of us eat and play games. He didn't feel well enough to participate, but he didn't want to stay in his room and miss out on the fun.

We had Elder Marquardt and Elder Endemano join us for Thanksgiving dinner at 1:00 (Have to leave plenty of time in the day for left overs!). It was our first Thanksgiving without any extended family, and the first Thanksgiving dinner we made completely by ourselves. (In 19 years, our first! Can you believe that? It helped us realize how truly blessed we are to have always been surrounded with family and loved ones.) Despite our small crowd (9), we pulled out all the stops and making all our traditional family favorites; dressing (not stuffing), sweet potatoes, stuffed mushrooms, true southern greens, rolls (Amanda is getting to be a pro), and then we tried a few twists with the turkey and mashed potatoes. I made the turkey in the pressure cooker (90 minutes, and it was great-even the white meat was tender and juicy) and garlic mashed potatoes. The gravy was great-but the potatoes were so good on their own, I hardly touched it. We made all kinds of pies and cakes, and then bought some others just for good measure. We had so much food! After we ate, we'd hardly made a dent in anything. (The elders were pretty happy about that...they're our kind of people. They love left overs.)

We took some time the rest of the day to relax with the family. It was so different than last year with all the kids visiting in California, we really appreciated having everyone home. We had such a great time, it made up for missing our friends and family all over the country. Elder Marquardt introduced us a new card game called Cowboys and Indians. Of course we played Nertz and spoons...and a few others, but we also had fun with some groups games we haven't played in a long time. We played the brown paper bag game and found out just how flexible Elder Marquardt is (go yoga!), and...so that we have a gospel principle involved, we saw the opposition in all things in his companion-Elder Endemano. Ha! Unfortunately, Elder Endemano wasn't the only person straining to reach their face to their toes without falling down flat (Ouch-it hurt). Jessica and Elder Marquardt ended up with a draw-both able to pick up the bag even when it had been whittled down to a wisp of paper. We also intrigued the kids with body mechanic phenomenons and had some strength contests. It was a lot of fun.

After the elders left (and came back for left overs and left again), we ended the evening with a twilight bike ride. The sky darkened, the moon was hidden, but the sky remained rain free-perfect for us to appreciate the first taste of Christmas lights around the neighborhood. (Thanks dad, for getting our lights up!)

It really was a perfect day: being with the people we love most and enjoying it, talking together about our blessings and why we are grateful, and in all this understanding and acknowledge God's hand in our lives for which we are forever grateful.

"Now my Brethren, we see that God is mindful of every people, whatsoever land they may be in, yea, he numbereth his people, and his bowels of mercy are over all the earth. Now this is my joy and my great thanksgiving; yea, and I will give thanks unto my God forever. Amen." Alma 36:27