Thanksgiving 2010

We hosted Thanksgiving dinner at our house this year for 27 people-- a first for us!  Most of the Gillespie family lives in the Memphis area and their long-standing tradition has always been to get together for one big Thanksgiving meal.  Though typically hosted by Aunt Beverly and Uncle David, our house is well designed for entertaining and so we offered to give it a go.  She was all too happy to have someone else host this year and we enjoyed getting it all together. 

I love the Fall. It is my favorite time of year. This beautiful tree (1 of 2 beautiful trees, actually) made for a gorgeous front yard on Thanksgiving day.  

The day before was a busy one-- decorating, folding napkins, preparing our tablescapes...

  

And baking! Our family loves to bake and Luke was sure to get in on the action.

He has a special helper stool with high sides so that all his "help" in the kitchen does not result in injury. This kid loves to cook and it became clear quite quickly that we needed something more secure than a simple table chair for him to stand on. Enter the helper stool. It's awesome. 

Allen got a new smoker a couple months ago and had been looking forward to smoking our turkey ever since, with high hopes of getting somewhat close to our friend, Jeremy's, amazing turkey.  In order to feed so many people, we had to get a 22 lb bird AND a large turkey breast. Apparently you have to smoke the turkey 1/2 hour for every pound. That meant Allen was up at 2 am the night before Thanksgiving to get the fire hot and the turkey in, checking on it every so often, and in off & on rain! What a labor of love! He did an awesome job! (JJ, you would have been proud of him!)

Break time!

And for the tables:

This table sat 10.

This table sat 8.

This one sat 5.

And this one sat 4. Whew! 

The buffet begins! Allen's dad, Rick, with his mom, Granny, who is 95. 

Auntie helping Luke chow down. Or in his case, pick at things until he found something he liked, and proceed to only eat that, nothing else.

This was so funny. Allen's cousins were chilling on the couch and Luke walked right up to them and sat down in between them. It was as if he was like, "hey, those are the cool guys and I'm going to be one of them."

He then proceeded to bring them a couple of his favorite books so they could all enjoy them together.

Luke caught site of Mommy with the camera and wanted his picture taken. :)

Again with Luke's crazy "cheese" face (see prior post). 

It was a lot of work to host Thanksgiving for a big crowd, but fun to be with so much family!  

Will we do it again next year????