Thanksgiving

Joel and I arrived home from Europe on November 23rd, just a day before Thanksgiving.  We decided not to make the drive to St. George to be with the Hammer family.  We stayed home instead and had a very quiet, intimate Thanksgiving.  Grandpa Judy came over and we loved having him with us.  We had never cooked our very own Thanksgiving dinner before.  Being with large families every year, we are always assigned a salad or dessert. 
Joel decided to tackle the turkey, so we began looking for recipes.  We decided on trying a brined turkey.  We put it in a large bucket with lots of "stuff" for several hours.  And it was Delicious!!!
We had all the trimmings and makings of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.  Potatoes, gravy (made by Grandpa of course), jello, Green beans, rolls and pies with ice cream.  I even went all out and got some Chargers!  Oh, how I love chargers.
We had so much to be thankful for this year.  Expecially having Coelton with us.  He could have been taken from us in his accident and was given a second chance. 
We read the first thanksgiving story that Chloe made from school.  We also played a fun charades game during dinner.  I hid words on paper under everyone's plate.  They had to act out their word and we all had to guess what it was.  It was fun. 
We went to a movie after we all stuffed ourselves and cleaned the kitchen and had a nap.  We went to Hugo.  It was not the most exciting movie, but we enjoyed being together and seeing a movie on 3-D.
It was a great day.  I love my family. 
We recently got a new couch and I re-did some things in the living room.  I took these pictures on Thanksgiving to show our new room, complete with lots of new tables and lamps.  This picture doesn't even show 2 more lamps that we added.