Turkey Day!

 I hope everyone had an awesome Thanksgiving!  We decided to stay home this year.  We missed our family, but we had a really good time just us!  Ryan enjoyed tasting all the deliciousness before it was done!  How did I get an ENTIRE Thanksgiving meal prepared with THREE boys in the house?  Well, other then letting Ryan lick every single spoon...

 Ash slept soundly for a few hours!  He NEVER does that!

 Isn't he the most darling little guy?!

 And Aiden watched Rango...about 5 times!

 The fruits of my labor...a beautiful, juicy, crisp turkey!  It was absolutely delicious!  I brined it the night before in a wet brine of stock, ice, salt and various spices and herbs.  Then I rinsed it off the next day (I think I let it brine for about 16 or so hours) patted the bad boy dry, loosened the skin from the meat and rubbed a homemade herb butter under the skin ALL over, then used my meat injector and injected MORE herb butter into the entire thing, then rubbed it down with more herb butter on the outside.  I did NOT use salted butter, because I think it's unnecessary.  I stuffed it with onions, apples and celery.  Let's just say it was absolutely DELICIOUS!!

 Ryan carving our first Turkey!

 Aiden enjoying his sparkling white grape juice.  He loved that stuff!

 The full feast (and my cute munchkins)

 We had a pumpkin pie, pecan pie, homemade whipped cream, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, candied yams, stuffing, turkey, deviled eggs, cranberry (the only non homemade from scratch thing) and rolls.  It was AMAZING!!

 Here are the beautiful pies I made the night before...my dad would be proud!

 My sign and candle I threw together Wednesday night.  I don't love it and will probably do something else with them, but my original centerpiece idea fell through :(  maybe next year!

 Aiden chowing down on pumpkin pie.  He was basically like Bob on 'What About Bob' at the bbq.  It was so funny!  I don't want to get into this whole big list (I could go for hours if I could) but I do want to express how Thankful I am.  I am so thankful for my family.  My husband is my best friend and I am so lucky to be married to such a wonderful man!  My sons are my pride and joy.  I love those little stinkers more then anything!  Life would not be worth living without those 3 wonderful boys in my life!  I am also thankful for all the basics.  A house to live in, a job to support my kids and get my husband through school, a fridge & cabinets full of food, clothing that is clean, a bed to sleep in, heat in the winter (we don't have a/c in this apartment haha), running water, you know, all the basics.  It's all I need and I am so thankful that I am lucky enough to have ALL those wonderful blessings!!

 Today, I made homemade marshmallows for our hot cocoa and homemade pumpkin fudge for our Christmas decorating party that we're doing tomorrow!  It'll be so fun!  Aiden is excited, which makes me excited, and fill my house with such a wonderful feeling!

 We also hit up the Black Friday sales...at 10 am :)  I did get some awesome cyber deals on cloth training pants (SO EXCITED!!) and they had buy one get on free on some hybrid diapers - which were MARKED HALF OFF ANYWAY!!  So I got 2 Hybrid cloth diapers for the price of $9.90 and they came with an insert.  I couldn't pass that up!!  I cannot wait for the training pants also!  We have spent at least $1,000 on pull ups for Aiden, and I only paid $98 and some change for 4 covers and 20 inserts for potty training!  SO AWESOME!!!  We also got a bunch of cloth wipes to try.  My poor little man keeps getting rashes ever since we switched from cloth, to disposable for a couple weeks, back to cloth.  He got a rash during the disposable diapers and it still hasn't gone away, so we also got some natural rash and calming spray, since NO diaper creams have been working :( ... it's very sad!  So we got ALL that for less then $200 - plus I got ANOTHER free diaper AND free shipping!  GO ME!  wow - that was a lot!  We went to Old Navy and got clothes for my kids and Aiden is HUGE!!  He's in size SIX boys pants!  I cannot believe it!  He's ONLY 4!  I got some pants (I won't tell you what size though) and we got a few other things.  We went to Wal Mart next...it was pretty picked through, but we did score that awesome mixer (less then $20!!  It came with a bowl, beaters, whisk AND dough hooks!) a coat for Asher (I can't find Aiden's old one) and some PJ's for the boys!

Overall it was a great, great day spent with my darling little family!  Unfortunately I'm fighting yet another sinus infection, which is why there are no pictures of me up there, but we still had a lot of fun!  I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and Black Friday!