Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is always a busy time of year at the Dahl house.  We usually host Thanksgiving dinner and it often includes a big crowd.  This year Morgan, Jamie and Elliot were not with us for the holiday, but Morgan and Elliot came early for a visit.  Elliot was just shy of 10 months old at the time of their visit.  He is a cutie and we loved seeing him and enjoying his fun personality.

Elliot was very entertained by Luna.  And surprisingly, Luna was very good with him.  Elliot was happy to share his cheerios and cheese with the dog.

You've had enough, Luna.

Elliot enjoys climbing over and through anything along his path.  On Tuesday before Thanksgiving Jamie flew in and the three of them headed to Tucson for the rest of the holiday.  Thanks for giving us our Elliot-fix!

Then it was time to really get our preparations underway.  We cooked our turkeys in the pit again this year.  We always invite everyone we know to put their turkey in the pit and usually we only get a few takers.  This year it was popular!  We were able to determine our maximum occupancy for the pit is 25 turkeys to allow for size and wrapping variations.  Here is a shot of the full pit.

It was like a party Wednesday night as everyone came by to put wire and identification on their turkey before putting it in the pit.  Next year we'll have to plan on hot chocolate and marshmallows for standing around by the fire.  The kids had a blast.  For them Thanksgiving was a two day extravaganza of playing with cousins.

Here is the one shot we ended up with of our Thanksgiving meal.  (Does anyone have other shots to share?) We had 52 people for dinner.  Thankfully the weather was gorgeous.  We opened all the doors and ate on the patio.  The kids had a great time playing in the warm sunshine.

We only had one mishap.  Adam caught a handful of sand in his eye.  After washing out a good amount of sand at home, Dan could see that there was still sand on the inside of his eyelid.  We headed off to the Emergency Room for some assistance.  Luckily it was a slow night in the ER, and we got right in.  They numbed Adam's eye, irrigated it, turned his eyelid inside-out, and used a q-tip to remove the remaining sand.  Thankfully he only had some minor abrasions on his cornea and after some antibiotic drops, he seems to have made a full recovery.  He will get a follow-up check with his ophthalmologist soon.

What a week!  Bryce says Thanksgiving is one of his favorite holidays because it involves lots of family and lots of good food.  I think that says it all.   We have been greatly blessed.