Thanksgiving 2024

Thanksgiving 2024 marked one year since we moved into our house! The fact that we did not move all of our belongings from one house to another two days before Thanksgiving this year made this year's Thanksgiving Day much less exhausting than last year. But Thanksgiving is an exhausting holiday in general, so we still got plenty worn out! It's always worth the effort though. Being tired after doing traditions and making fun memories gives me a warm-hearted happy glow that I do my best to pause and appreciate in and around all of the work. 

For some unknown reason, we decided to have Thanksgiving food all week long, starting the Sunday before Thanksgiving. So we got two turkeys (a big one and a small one), 20 pounds of potatoes, and enough other foods to fill out our weeklong feast. Basically we made two Thanksgiving dinners instead of one, so it was double the effort to eat the same foods for 8 days straight! Haha, I wrote down reminders, our grocery list, and things that worked/didn't work this year to stash in my recipe box to help me plan Thanksgiving next year. I made sure to include a bullet point reminding myself that it is too much work to have Thanksgiving all week when there are teenage appetites in the house! We used to do the weeklong feast when the kids were younger and when we didn't host the big family meal on Thanksgiving day, but now that the kids are old and we do host the big fam, it just doesn't work anymore. 

On Thursday morning, we hosted the 18th Annual White Family Turkey Trot at 8am. Jeff prepped a cooler full of hot water for post-race hot chocolate, and we waited for people to arrive...and waited... and waited... One car showed up around 7:40am. Our turkey trot tradition is something we do whether other people join us or not, so it wasn't that big of a deal, but still, we've had pretty good attendance over the past few years. Then, between 7:50-7:55, everyone came! We ended up having 30+ people at our turkey trot! Everyone gets to choose whether to walk or run, and they also get to choose their distance: our out-and-back course has easy turnaround points for a one mile, two mile, or 5k distance. Starting with the traditional "gobble, gobble, gobble," we ran for it! Jeff won in 19:53, one of our middle school XC coaches (Freddie) was 2nd, Jay came in 3rd in 22 something, and I was fourth with 23:13. Rose ran the 5k at an easy fun pace with one of her friends, and Amber ran the one mile. We did not make paper finisher's medals this year. 

After the run, we walked back across the street to our house to have hot chocolate and hot cider on the front driveway. This is my favorite part of Thanksgiving Day: running with friends and chatting for a bit before everyone rushes home to get out of the cold and cook their feasts. Nobody lingers overly long but it's still a happy relaxed gathering, celebrating friendship and health and gratitude.

Aside from The Week of the Kitchen leading up to Thursday, Thanksgiving was good. The kids helped in the kitchen, rolling rolls, peeling potatoes, and cooking bacon green beans. Jeff did the turkey and mashed the taters. I made the pies (six), cranberry sauce, gravy, one of the turkeys, dairy-free mashed potatoes, yams and apples, and rolls. I was also the head chef, directing traffic and handing out jobs. My brain nearly short circuited with all of the chaos and demands and mess! 

We had the White side of the family over for Thanksgiving dinner at 1pm: Dan and Leslie (Jeff's parents), Steph and Jasen (Jeff's sister & her husband) and their four kids, and Jeff's brother Sam. The food turned out great, and all 14 of us fit easily at two tables in our dining area. The weird part was how short it all was: we cooked and cooked in the kitchen for over three hours, and our guests stayed for barely two and a half hours. I was so tired that I was happy to collapse in a quiet room when they left, but I also felt a little sad that they ate and left so fast. Holidays are when I want to sit around and talk and spend time with extended family members. We do the quick visit thing with the local family members during the rest of the year, so I guess the day felt a little less holiday-ish when they did another quick visit on a major holiday. I even forgot to take a picture of everyone at the tables during dinner! I also forgot to ask everyone to say one thing that they're thankful for. There's only so much one person can do, though!

Jay, Rose, and Amber spent the afternoon watching Lord of the Rings. After putting leftovers in the fridge, Jeff and I took a nap. Later, the kids cleaned the kitchen (with much negotiating/disputing over who had to do what jobs, haha).

I am thankful for my family and friends, my home, my faith, my health, and technology that makes enjoying these things easier. Happy Thanksgiving!

I made four pumpkin cheesecakes (a double batch), all in one mixing bowl. It was a gallon of pumpkin cheesecake filling!

Jay experienced the trials of cutting raw bacon for the first time. He worked and hacked at it for quite a while before Jeff had mercy and finished the job for him.

Amber did my hair one night, possibly as a ploy on my part to get her to stop squabbling with Rose during family scripture.

The cute little 12 pound turkey I baked on Monday was still half frozen so spatchcocking it (cutting down the spine) was rough going. The butter wouldn't rub in to such a cold bird, so I tucked chunks of butter under the skin instead. It looked like some very strange roadkill when I put it in the oven!

Thankfully it cooked up all nice and brown.

Swim season was still in full force this week. For the first time, I went inside the fitness club and saw the small pool where Jeff coaches the high school boys' swim team. 2.5 lanes wide, 20 yards long, and 5 feet deep!

Amber helped me roll the first batch of rolls before school on Tuesday morning. I accidentally baked them for 30 minutes instead of 20 minutes though, so they came out very hard and dry. Thankfully the next two batches of rolls turned out fluffy and perfect.

Amber loves making rolls.

Another day of freezing fog called for more treadmill time.

My dairy free pie of substitutions: this cookie-like pie has pecans, golden raisins, and white chips in it. After I added the white chips, I saw on the side of the bag that they do have some milk in them, so this pie was almost dairy free, haha. It worked way better for my stomach than the pumpkin cheesecakes and the sour cream apple pie. And I had this pie all to myself because my family hates raisins! 

The Turkey Trot:

The starting line on the canal road. Jeff says "Ready, set," and everyone is supposed to join in with "gobble gobble gobble!" as we start running.

One of the runner's dad was our lone spectator and took a few pictures during the run. They came through the text message he sent with mere kilobytes left of their size, so I stuck them into a blurry collage. The top level is the start, middle level is Jay and me running, and the bottom level is Rose running with her group and the hot chocolate fest at the end.

The water was just warm enough to steam in the cold air. Maybe next year we need to get up earlier and boil more so it stays hot longer, haha.

My friend Camille is awesome!

Kitchen chaos! An added element to the mental burden on Thanksgiving was that Jeff was feeling some of his usual autonomic flare-up symptoms which made him struggle, and made me worried. He kept taking breaks to lie down, which helped him a little but made me feel sad that he wasn't well enough to have fun in the kitchen working together the whole time.

These three are very meticulous potato peelers.

The island looks empty because all of the food was in three ovens at this point, haha.

The guests arrived an hour early. I managed to snap this one picture. I still can't believe that I didn't take a picture of everyone at the tables! Arg.

Jeff with his bacon covered turkey. The thickest parts of the turkey didn't cook all the way, so that was kind of funny, but it smelled amazing and he carved it up well.

I managed to take a cousin picture because Thanksgiving has become the one time that I put my foot down and take at least one. We were missing Sam's Katherine this year so we didn't take a full group picture. 

Grandma and Grandpa with their seven grandkids!

Before everyone left, I remembered to take a picture of the half-eaten food at least!

Jay finished his Thanksgiving Day with some bedtime hot chocolate, complete with whipped cream and chocolate chips for garnish.