Thanksgiving

Boy am I behind!  I keep thinking that I will catch up on my blogging, but it is one more thing that never seems to happen.  We survived Halloween and made it to Thanksgiving.  The kids and I spent the entire week in College Station and we had a blast.  We shopped, painted Christmas ornaments, cooked and baked and spent lots of time with family.  Thanksgiving really is my favorite holiday!
It has become a Thanksgiving tradition for the kids to bake a pie. They both love to help in the kitchen and this year Rachel decided she would make the pie with them.  This year I finally felt ready to get out Nanna's recipes and look through them.  It was tough at first, but then fun to see her notes to herself and all of the  things that she had saved.  Did she really make all of those?  Who was eating the salad made with canned salmon?!?  Rachel and the kids decided on her chocolate pie, which has meringue.  I have never even made meringue so I knew this would be fun to watch.  Rachel did not read the recipe before starting and since I did, we had some pretty good laughs at her expense.  Everyone in our family has a kitchen story they take some grief over.  Mine is the cookies Catie and I made years ago and added milk to.  They turned out sort of like cornbread and even the dog wouldn't eat them.  This one will be Rachel's, but despite everything, the pie turned out great.  It tasted just like Nanna and was all gone by Friday night.
I found her stuffing recipe hidden in the dessert section and modified my recipe to match hers.  I am not sure I ever got the center cooked all the way through, but it turned out really well and finally tasted the way I wanted it too.  Next time I know what to change to make it perfect.  I also used her lemon pie recipe to make lemon meringue pie.  It took forever to bake and she didn't say how long I should bake it, but it turned out pretty well for my first try.  Will ate it anyway. 
We had about 35 people throughout the day and most of the pictures are from Catie's husband Steve.  He is such an amazing photographer. 
We ate, watched the Aggies win and then Rebecca and I braved Toys R Us at 10:00 pm.  It was freezing and the line was wrapped around the building.  We braved it for about 20 minutes and gave up after they told us it would be 45 more minutes just to get inside.  We went to Walmart and shopped instead.  I don't know what was more fun, shopping or watching the people fight over the sales.  Interesting people shop at Walmart at midnight before Black Friday!  I am not sure we will do that again next year!

Brandt and Gunnar playing iPod games

Campbell and Sadie's favorite toy

Yum-Yum!

Tim and Allie

Sadie and Campbell - Still together