Thankgiving & Our First Dance Song

What a great and extremely filling Thanksgiving!  Even though this year has been a challenging one, I have a lot of reasons to Give Thanks.

Yesterday, Scott and I got up early to finish off what we were bringing to my family's Thanksgiving Dinner.  Scott completely took over my housewife duties and put together two great dishes for the occasion.  I would love to take credit for the delicious sides you see below, but I just wouldn't feel right doing it.  While I was taking a pre-Thanksgiving nap --er, falling asleep on the couch at 8pm-- Scott was getting busy in the kitchen getting busy.

The destination was my Aunt Karen's house and she owns a beautiful ranch in St. Augustine with a gorgeous two-story country-chic house, a horse stable, tractors, a pond, a cook-out gazebo and about 10 acres of land.

Here you'll find little cell phone service, horses, cows, a donkey, dogs, catfish and good company.

*NOTE: Unfortunately, I forgot to put my memory card back into my camera, (oops) so instead I relied on the Instagr.am app on my phone to document the highlights of our Thanksgiving.

This year was different because we got to bring Roadie with us!  My cousins have little ones so there's always toddlers running about, but this holiday was the first time I was responsible for someone other than myself, well besides Scott <--- give the whoopie cushion a rest already will you?!

As soon as we arrived, Roadie couldn't wait to get out and explore everything:

I swear the little guy has no fear.  He walked right up to the horses, stuck his head INSIDE of the gates and barked at them.  Besides being amazed at the animals there, he had a hay (get it?) day rolling around in the grass and playing with the other dogs.

We planned to eat our traditional Thanksgiving meal around 1pm, since my cousins had in-laws to visit later on.  I'm glad we decided to eat that early because I'm not even exaggerating when I say I am still full from that meal.

I didn't get to take pictures of everything, but our meal included:

• Turkey and Ham - standards
• My Uncle Bucky's infamously sweet, Sweet Potatoes
• Stuffing
• Cranberries
• Macaroni & Cheese (the kind that's crunchy on top!)
• Green Beans & Potatoes
• Green Bean Casserole
• Rice and Gravy
• Dinner Rolls 
• My Mom's Cherry/Strawberry Jello-Salad
• My Aunt Sandy's Lime & Cottage Cheese Jello-Salad

and last but certainly not least, Scott's Cucumber & Tomato Salad with onions, feta cheese and mint tossed in a lime vinaigrette dressing:

We knew all of the traditional starches would be covered, so we opted to bring something different, and sneak in some veggies that weren't covered in bread crumbs.  Everyone seemed to like it, so I'm sure one of us will be making this and I'll post a recipe in the near future.

After linner (somewhere between lunch + dinner), we were all stuffed like turkeys and took a minute to breathe before digging into dessert.  Well, maybe not all of us...by the time I made it over to the dessert table Scott's Pumpkin Roll was almost gone!

Quickly, I gathered a plate with a slice of the roll (which by the way was his best one yet), home-made buttermilk Pound Cake & a slice of Pumpkin Pie:

I'm not kidding when I tell you the Pumpkin Roll was almost gone within 10 minutes after dinner.  I got a few scraps together to form a slice for myself, but it should have really looked like this:

Y-U-M.  My family loved it, and we were excited to contribute things worth raving about! :)  I guess you could say our first Thanksgiving as a married couple was a S-U-C-C-E-S-S, Yes.

After a few hours of visiting with the family and laughing at the dogs playing, it was time to head home.  Scott and I rode back to Orlando with my dad and grandma and talked about exciting things coming up for us the entire ride home.

When we got to the Daytona area, we stopped mid-conversation when we realized a special song was playing on the radio.  Scott and I had a hard time deciding what Our First Dance together as a married couple would be on our Wedding Day, and 2 days before the wedding at the last minute changed it to "Hold Us Together" by Matt Maher.

To get you up to speed: 3 weeks before the wedding Scott lost his job.  On top of the stresses of planning a wedding we were now in the mind frame of Where are we going to go and what are we going to do?  We had a different First Dance Song picked out, but when we heard this one two days before the wedding it seemed to be playing just for us...so we changed it right then.

My favorite part is at the 2:10 mark:



Hearing that song put a huge smile on my face.  What a great reminder...everything is going to be just fine.
And for that, I am so thankful.

Happy Turkey Day, Turkeys! :)