Thanksgiving Weekend

I hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving weekend as much as we did! My parents and younger brother, Scott, flew into Bentonville Wednesday night to spend the holiday with us. We didn't wake up until 8:30 or 9 on Thursday and lazily cooked the meal - a little here and a little there until about 11:30. Mark smoked the turkey in his electric smoker, and mom and I handled everything else. A cute little family in our ward joined us for dinner and brought the pie, so all the stressful stuff was divided up pretty well. Chad and Rachel just welcomed their 3rd little girl 6 days before the feast, so we knew Rachel wouldn't feel up to cooking a big meal and we have room to spare in our house so it worked out perfectly! We introduced my family to some good ol' southern food. My dad loved the Dean/Elzey/Smallwood corn pudding recipe and even picky eater Scott tried a little of everything I think. The table looked so great I don't know why nobody thought to take a picture, it really was delicious and pretty looking at the same time. Oh well...that is what memories are for. After the feast we realized that we had cooked WAY TOO MUCH! Every Tupperware piece in the house (with the exception of the little 1"x1"x1" inch sauce bowls) were used to store all our left-overs. Mark and I are still eating Thanksgiving Dinner every night, and although a few items are getting low, it looks like the mashed potatoes and corn pudding might last all week.

Friday the boys went Duck hunting. I am pretty sure that was the real reason Scott decided to come to Arkansas. They said as they went out into the lake in their boat hundreds of thousands of ducks and geese flew up off the lakes. According to all three of them, the sky even got darker. Crazy! Needless to say it wasn't a hard hunt ;-). The best part was they got to eat bacon wrapped duck for dinner and then gave all the meat to a local who needed it to help feed his family of 10.

Last week I had an interior designer from our ward come give us ideas on how to decorate our two largest rooms in the house. We haven't ever put a lot of effort into decor so we don't own much and didn't really know where to start with such a big space either. Her number one suggestion was to buy a huge rug to ground the room and then use the colors in that rug to plan the rest of the room. While the boys hunted Friday and Saturday, Mom and I went Black Friday shopping (not at midnight) and I bought a new $250 rug for our living room that only cost me $104! Now that the rug is purchased I get to start buying curtains, accent pillows, and the like. I am getting very excited for everything in that room to be put together and done!

We also stuffed 120 clear glass Christmas ornaments with Gold and Silver tinsel for our ward's RS Christmas Party. Whew...I'm glad that huge project is done - Thanks Mom! Between hot gluing ribbon onto the caps to coordinate with the tinsel inside the ornament I hot glued ornaments on a Styrofoam wreath. It took longer than I had expected and if I hadn't gotten everything on sale (including the glue sticks) it would have been cheaper to just buy one, but I did save a few bucks and the colors are the exact same as we use on our Christmas Tree every year, so I guess it was worth it. I still can't decide if I should put a bow on it or not though.

Thanks again DeYoung family for coming out to celebrate Thanksgiving with us in our new home. We missed you Curtis, but you'll just have to convince Mom and Dad to do it again in 2 years when you get home from your mission!