The first Hough Thanksgiving...EVER!

If you trace back through our past 11 Thanksgivings, you would find us practically anywhere but at our own house. AND...the only contribution we would be making would be a side dish or two at the most. And maybe a pie. This wasn't because we don't like Thanksgiving or don't want to do our own. We've just been thought of and included by friends or away from home, or it just worked out that we didn't do our own Thanksgiving. And to the friends who made sure we didn't spend this holiday alone, we feel sooooooooo blessed because of you!

Here's my attempt at our Thanksgiving history run down. The only year that's hazy is 1998...(I think I'm right though).

1997--with our "adopted" family, the Gardiners in Ogden, UT
1998--with Sarah's family in Lehi, UT (my fabulous roommate while Jared was living in IL)
1999--with the Hough family in Pontiac, IL
2000--with my sister Michelle, our neighbors Kim and Harry, and Nicole (Jared's sister) and her future husband, Jeremy in our own apartment in Ogden, UT (but sticking with tradition, we didn't do the turkey)
2001--with my ENTIRE family in Orlando, FL...we ate in the dining room of our hotel
2002--Jared's parents came to MI after Cooper was born and we ate at The Old Country Buffet
2003--with Jared's family at his brother's house in Bloomington, IL...Jake decided to throw rocks around the parked vehicles and out of the three hit our van and shattered one of the sliding door windows ON Thanksgiving day. Niiice. Yea for that $0 windshield deductible because it covered the sliding door too!
2004--with the Schneider family in Forest Grove, OR
2005--with Jared's parents and friends in Pontiac, IL
2006--with the Wilde family and friends in Hillsboro, OR
2007--with the Horne family and their neighbors in Aloha, OR (we were closing on our house 1 week later)

2008--we got several offers to do Thanksgiving with other families and we were touched by the invitations. But we wanted to try it on our own, at least once. Besides the fact that Jared offered to work at the Urgent Care from 8am-3pm to help fund his CME conference in Missouri the following week.

Which meant I was responsible for the entire meal. I wasn't too worried. Especially since I wasn't cooking for guests outside my little family. That helped take some of the stress off. I was most concerned about the turkey. I've never bonded with one before. I also had a goal not to call my mom to ask any questions, but that didn't last when I looked inside the turkey and couldn't find the bag 'o giblets. I looked and I looked, but they weren't there.

Mom instructed me to stick my hand waaaaayy down in there and feel around. I told her I already did and couldn't find one. I think she doubted my attempt at feeling around for it. She said I had to really get fresh with the turkey. Okay, so maybe I didn't put my hand ALLLL the way down but I was doing a lot of looking and couldn't see anything that would resemble a giblet bag. That's when she asked..."did you look in the neck cavity?" Huh? I thought I was in the neck area. That's when I realized I was at the OTHER end of the turkey. Sure enough, there was another, much smaller "entry" and tucked inside were those giblets. Phew...trauma one was now complete.

I made my mom's awesome sage stuffing and jammed it inside the bird, in all the available spaces. With Jake's help, I got the turkey in the oven bag and we were good to go. It was hard to determine how long to bake it though. The oven bag box said one thing and the turkey instructions said another. I got a turkey with a pop-up timer, and after about 2 hours and 15 minutes, the turkey looked pretty good. Nice and golden brown. But the timer didn't look like it popped up. The fact that my oven cooks VERY HOT only complicated the matter. So I called Mom again. She asked if my timer was up. I said it only looked like it was a hair farther away from the turkey than it was when it started. She said it was probably done. I wasn't convinced quite yet. But what did I know? Mom's had much more fowl experience than me. After talking some more and finding out their stuffed bird, that was larger than ours, only took 2 1/2 hours, I figured ours was probably done. I guess we would know soon enough.

I was actually impressed at how all the other dishes came together at the end. That was my only other T-day challenge. After I took the turkey out to rest at 2:30, I baked the green bean casserole (physical proof of my love for Jared, because green bean anything, just the smell, makes me my stomach turn), mashed my potatoes & made the gravy. The pie, fruit salad, cranberry sauce and rolls were already done. Jared walked in at 3:05 to carve the turkey and we were set!

It wasn't a big spread, but we were okay with that. If I could have just turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes, I would be a happy girl. All the other stuff (minus the green bean gaggerole) were bonus. And sadly, we didn't have leftovers for more than a couple days. But I now have turkey-confidence (and with that comes turkey anatomy awareness) and look forward to doing it again--even if it's not Thanksgiving.



Later that night, our friends came over to play games and have dessert. It was a nice ending to a lovely, history making day for our family.