Southern Thanksgiving...

Darin and I decided we wanted to have a low key Thanksgiving this year. Alex our nephew lives 3 hours away and we thought it would be fun to spend the holiday with him.  We gave him the option of us going to him or having him drive to us.  He chose to come to us.  Darin had a couple of days off.  My cousin Kristin Bayles Batchlor lives in Columbia.  We invited her family to join us and a great couple in our ward the Welch's.  It was a great gathering and food was AWESOME!

Darin and Alex decided to go to our ward paintball war...I guess that is what they do in the south rather than play football. :) So I was in charge of cooking the turkey.  I was a bit nervous and I burned a few places but overall the turkey was "moist." It isn't as scary to me now.

 Darin did the carving and he used his handy dandy electrical carving knife.  Have I ever said that my husband has a weird fetish with kitchen appliances!

 Megan brought the mashed potatoes and schooled me on how to make gravy.  They were yummy.  Just like my mothers! I made an attempt to make the Pioneer Woman stuffing...I should have stuck with my mothers recipe.  A sweet little southern woman saw me looking at the corn meal to make corn bread for the stuffing.  She ranted and raved over a certain brand and said it would be the best thing I ever had.  I took her advice and IT WAS THE WORSE CORN BREAD I have ever had!  SO the stuffing was not as good as it could have been.

BUT I did try the Pioneer woman green bean casserole and WOW was it yummy!  Kristin brought this amazing cranberry salad (btw I need the recipe) that I plan on making a staple to all our future Thanksgivings. She as well brought the rolls, and 2 pies.  It was my first sweet potato pie...I guess you can't have Thanksgiving in the south with out it!  I am glad I tried it was fabulous!

 Our table was full of people we love and the tradition continued of drawing on the table of what you are grateful for.  I didn't take a picture of everyone's drawings before Asa the terror destroyed it!

 After dinner Darin broke out the ultrasound machine.  Most families play games we ultrasound random body parts like the eye, kidney and who knows what else! Never a dull moment with Dr. Darin!

 After everyone had their turn Asa went over and grabbed the ultrasound and put it on his belly.  So darn cute!

 Darin decided to ultrasound the little boy for real.

 Bad idea he was ANGRY!

 But the realized it wasn't so bad.

Alex's wonderful mother Sasha sent us a couple of Alex's favorite games to play while he was at our house. So great, thanks Sasha!

 This game was a bit complicated at first but I think if we would have done it one more round we would have had the hang of it.  In the end I won and Darin lost! haha

We really didn't see a lot of the children.  Nash LOVES his cousins and could not handle his excitement for them to get here.  The Batchlor kids are so fun! 

We are so happy we had family to spend Thanksgiving with this year.  What a blessing to have such wonderful people so near on a wonderful holiday.