We did it! We had Thanksgiving.

We did it. We had Thanksgiving. Honestly, I don’t know how it happened. I’m tired just thinking about it.

Somehow, on Wednesday at 3pm, even though I was still sick, I found myself buckling Aveline into a grocery cart.

I definitely sounded like a chain-smoking blues singer, but I was determined that our little family’s first Thanksgiving wasn’t going to be lame.

(I’m very stubborn.)

The shelves were already looking really sad and empty, but I was able to track down the last of the essentials, like an extremely frozen turkey. And sage. And celery. And sweet potatoes. And cranberries. And a whole cart full of other ingredients. (P.S. I didn’t even go over our grocery budget. BOO-YA!)

When Josiah got home from work on Wednesday night, he found me in the living room watching a cheesy Christmas drama…chopping rutabaga, sweet potatoes, celery and onions. The make-ahead mashed potatoes were already done, and the sweet potato chunks were roasting in the oven.

I kept on cooking, and Josiah kept on washing dishes…what an amazing man! Aveline’s room is next to the kitchen, and all the cooking would have woken her up, so we let her stay up late. :-) Don’t you remember that about holidays when you were a kid? Staying up too late? Well, that, and getting up super early. ;-) Good thing all three of us were able to sleep in a bit on Thanksgiving morning.

And what a beautiful Thanksgiving it turned out to be! I thought I was going to be really hard because we weren’t near family. And I did miss our families — a lot — but my day with Josiah and Aveline was just all kinds of wonderful. The weather was beautiful enough to open the windows, and we had a long leisurely morning, watching the parade and drinking coffee and laughing. No coffee for Aveline, although she did eat an entire banana for breakfast. Oops.

And then in the afternoon, we all feasted on glorious food.

Oh, and you know Josiah is the only person in this house who eats turkey, right? Yes. Twelve pounds of turkey for one dude.

Guess who doesn’t have to make dinner for a long, long time?