A Different Thanksgiving

This year Thanksgiving was very different for us.  It is very hard to be away from family during the Holidays.  Thanksgiving is one of the hardest.  I grew up with always a house full of family and many friends and others who didn't have family or a place they could go.  I remember many many times my parents would ask the Bishop and Missionaries if they knew of anyone who needed a place to go.  I don't remember there being a time that we didn't have someone come over or that we would fix a dinner or two to take to someone who needed it.  It always made our Thanksgiving special to have others in our home who didn't have family to go to.  This year was different.  All of our family is out in MO and AR and so it is only the two of us here.  I am so grateful we have each other, but it's still hard not having family.  I would have loved to have invited a lot of people to our home for the occasion, but my oven died.  This making it impossible to make all the great foods you would have for Thanksgiving including the turkey.  One sweet friend did offer to let us use their roaster till we could replace our oven, but that they would need it back for Thanksgiving, which would have been fine except it would defeat the purpose of us being able to have a Thanksgiving turkey on Thanksgiving it also doesn't help with pies, baked sweet potatoes with marsh mellows, green bean casserole, and homemade rolls.  Which make up some of the best parts of Thanksgiving in the food area.  There is also a different feeling when you get people together around a table on this day.  It's a feeling of uplifted spirits and of Giving Thanks.  The laughter of family, children and friends and the enjoyment of their company.  Something that I really look forward to at this time of year, something that didn't really happen.  No family, no friends, no oven, no real Thanksgiving...... or was it...  I have some wonderful parents who wanted to make sure that we would at least have a dinner, so they sent us a gift of money that we were to use to go out to dinner.  Rob and I had both been thinking about where to go and what to do for about a week and made a decision on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving on what we were going to do.  With no oven I was limited on what I could make so I got a little creative.  We bought a roaster for $30.00 a Turkey and a few extra things and headed home.  I absolutely adore my sweet Rob, but I was having a hard time that it was going to be just the two of us.  Thanksgiving is meant to be shared with extended family and friends.  Since we don't have family out here and no one was inviting us over we had to think of who we could invite over that was in somewhat the same predicament, who else needed Thanksgiving... Pete.  He just moved here, his family is in Omaha and he needed a place for Thanksgiving.

I cooked the Thanksgiving bird, made a jello with shapes in it, a fruit salad, deviled eggs, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, store bought rolls, green bean casserole off the BBQ and a chocolate Carmel pie for dessert.  This was the first time I have done Thanksgiving all by myself, and it tasted great!!  It was one of the best turkey's I have ever tasted, extremely moist.

I was very grateful that Rob and I could live up to the tradition of sharing our home with with a friend just as our families have taught us.  I am so grateful for the love Our family has for us and for others. 

It was the PERFECT Turkey!!!!