Thanksgiving, the tree, and all the rest of the long weekend.

Yesterday I posted about Sarah's ear piercing saga and now I need to continue with the rest of our long weekend!

After the doctor, she and I headed to swim practice.  After that, we came home and I made a delicious from scratch carrot cake for Thanksgiving. 

On Thursday morning Dan went for a run, the kids slept in but Sarah got up in time to watch some of the parade and  I made a delicious sweet potato casserole.

We headed over to my mom's for Thanksgiving lunch with her, my brother and my friend Jennifer's family.  We had a great spread which included jalapeno popper dip AND jalapeno poppers, chicken wings, turkey breast, ham, sweet potato casserole, twice baked potato casserole, green beans, cranberry sauce, and bread.  For dessert we had the carrot cake and a pumpkin pie from Costco.  (You can beat their pumpkin pies.  They are HUGE and they are only $5.99!)

I never can remember to take a picture of the food or the people.  But afterwards while we were all hanging out, I did have Sarah take a picture of me and Jennifer.

On Friday morning we headed to the mountains of North Carolina to get a Christmas tree.

 We got home and put out the wreaths and window candles and got to work decorating the tree.

On Saturday, Dan mowed the grass for the last time until spring, Peter watched football, Sarah and I went to shop for a Christmas ornament for an ornament party she's going to this weekend and Dan and I made fried chicken.

Every Sunday we would eat lunch at my grandmother's house and every Sunday we had fried chicken.  It was THE BEST fried chicken.  After we moved here, we started eating lunch every Sunday at my parent's house.  Mom makes a lot of different main dishes but several years ago (maybe more than several but I can't remember how many exactly) my Dad started frying chicken following the way my Grandma did it. And he nailed it!  Dan had always said he was going to go over there one Sunday morning while my dad was frying it to learn how to do it.

He never got over there to watch him do it so when I decided we needed to learn how to fry chicken, we headed to Google.  We found a recipe that  sounded similar to what my Dad did (electric skillet just like my Grandma) and we got to frying.  (Well,Dan got to frying.) I think it turned out great!  Especially for the first time we did it!

On Sunday, we had attended Mass, had lunch at mom's, watched the Panthers lose their game, went out for a drink/date, came home and watched the Patriots lose their game.  And that my friends, was our long weekend!