A Week In Review

We had a great Thanksgiving Break. It's holidays such as these that make me truly grateful for Dan's job as a teacher and that fortunate break schedule of his! He was off work and home to help the day before Thanksgiving, and people, let me tell you...I needed every last minute to get my act together. Because, yes. I tend to be a wait til the last minute type of gal. Dan & I initially offered to "host" this year, but then we panicked when the numbers kept increasing (and by "panic", I mean a vary grateful, happy panic- we loved having all 22 people be a part of the celebration this year!) AND, we kept thinking about all of the carpeting and lack of tile flooring in our house, and well...it made my palms sweaty just thinking about it. So, we moved the party to good ol' Mom & Dad's house and combined efforts. This proved to be a very wise decision. I also heavily delegated everything this year and my awesome family, as per usual, stepped it up and contributed above and beyond their call of duty. And look how amazing it all turned out!

The dinner table:

Here is the "funny" part of this posting where I do a very un-Nicole thing and break down how I embraced my new-found table craftiness. This year I dabbled in the world of Martha Stewart's decor ideas and although she didn't give me this exact idea (she used pears- soooooo "expected"), she was definitely the inspiration behind it. I took persimmons from the giant persimmon orchard on my parents property and used these for place card settings. Not only was this beautiful with all the orange screaming "HAPPY THANKSGIVING", but it was also free! I cut out chocolate brown leaves using card stock, punched a hold in it, and tied it with twine onto the persimmon stem. I wrote each person's name on the leaf and voila! Place cards telling everyone where to park themselves!

Honestly, figuring out who to put where at the table proved to be a more difficult task then my fancy-schmancy place card set-up.

There was lots of family lovin'. Here, Josh (a.k.a. Turkey BBQ chef) & Miss Mia snuggle in between turkey bastings.

 

The best part about Mimi & Papa's house is that the grandkids love to pile in their room/on their bed and cozy up together to watch movies. Here, 5 of the 7 grandkids were captured cuddled up, mesmerized by some Tom & Jerry, Thanksgiving style.

Geno, Isabel and Ben:

Mia and Ava:

 

Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of the whole Thanksgiving spread because I was too busy chasing my kids and my wine glass around and getting last minute details together, but I did get a nice head shot of the bird. All almost 24 pounds of her. And at this point, I know you're probably all on turkey overload and slightly tired of any turkey visuals that might remind you of the week's worth of calories you may have ingested in one sitting. (and to be honest, even I gagged a little bit when I saw this picture). But let's give credit where credit is due- and let me just say, ours truly was G-O-O-D.

Here's the proud turkey chef, my brother Josh, gloating in his BBQ turkey success. I'll admit, I wasn't too sure how it would all turn out, this whole "BBQ turkey" thing. I mean, who BBQ's their turkey? We did. It didn't cook as fast as he was hoping for, but I won't even mention the fact that we had to eat almost three hours later than we had planned. Because it was so moist and delicious and not at all smokey (as I was worried it would be) that it was well worth the wait. Well done, Josh. You've made a believer out of me.

Here's Favi, who made up half of "Team Gravy". (I was the other half but couldn't figure out how to take a picture of us working so earnestly on our roux.) Lots of whisking- and look! Her arms are whisking so fast, they're blurry!

The night ended with three varieties of pie and our first Christmas movie of the year, Elf. Nothing says Merry Christmas quite like spending Thanksgiving evening with Will Ferrell.

After all that eating together, the family decided we needed to have an active outing. So we all left the kiddos at home, headed up to Stanford for their last game of the season against Notre Dame and sat and watched a fantastic game (for the record: Stanford won). It was pretty chilly (relatively speaking, I know. Overlook that, Edith) so we bundled up and thoroughly enjoyed Mom & Dad's new wool blanket. I also thoroughly enjoyed my recession-unfriendly $5 hot dog. Somehow Dad is barely in the picture (we should fire our photographer), but everyone else made it in.

 

When the game was over, the crowd went bananas and charged the field. It was pretty great to watch. I thought about going down there myself, but then my claustrophobia set in, so I watched from the comfort of my seat.

It really was a great week. Thank you, family, for being so much fun to be with and for your expertise on having a good time. I am thankful, most of all, for you.

And in case you were secretly hoping for some recent Dewig Family pictures (minus me, as I seem to be the only one inspired to actually TAKE the pictures...), here you go: