Thanksgiving Extravaganza

This year, since we are without parents, we Crenshaw kids decided to get together and celebrate Thanksgiving. And since Laura just had baby Lucy and Ohio us 1/2 way between NC and IL we all went to her house. Everyone was able to come except Michael and John - so that was pretty great. I mean 4 outta 6 ain't bad. Very sadly Mark had to work black Friday (the curse of retail) so he could not come - but there was no way I was going to miss seeing all my nieces and nephew! (Oh yeah, and my brothers and sisters - I like them too.) So naturally I ditched my hubby for the week and drove up to Ohio with Susy, Todd and Lily. We go there Tuesday night - and since I was sans husband I set up camp on the couch while everyone else was upstairs in bedrooms and offices. Wednesday was spent baking pies and planning for turkey day. It was a lot of fun having Holly and Sophia help bake with us. Sophia very proudly told everyone which pies she made whenever she had the chance. And Holly was adorable coming into the kitchen all weekend asking "what cookin?" And randomly when I asked her what she was cooking, she always replied "juice."

Thursday we spent the day cooking and eating! We cooked a ton of food, we barely put a dent in it, so we had tons of left overs which was great. Travis and Todd fried the turkey outside, while we girls cooked the side dishes in the nice warm kitchen. None of us had done a fried turkey before - and let me tell you if you haven't, you should - delicious! Then we hung out and played Clue. Sophia was on my "team" and we were Ms Scarlet, but she never could decide which lady she liked the best so she kept putting Ms Scarlet, Ms Peacock and Ms White in the same room and having them talk to each other - which I thought was pretty hilarious, but was pretty confusing for playing the game and remembering who was where.

Friday we went to Amish country - I love Amish country! Last year I visited a friend of mine in Ohio and fell in love with Amish country, so needless to say I was very excited to visit again. And Mark was very jealous. The best butter I have ever eaten! We brought a cooler so we could bring back homemade Amish butter, cheese and jams. Delicious. The girls loved it too and were shouting out "buggy" and "horsey" every time we passed them. Very cute. And when we were walking around outside Holly would point out all the "horsey poo-poo" too me which was very nice of her. We went to an Amish restaurant for lunch called Grandma's Country Kitchen (or something like that) and while we were walking to our table Holly was Miss America turning and waving to everyone as we passed their tables. Once we were seated, near our table there was a random chair by itself in the corner which Sophia found very intriguing because she went and sat in it and said that she was in time out. We also went to this one big Amish store called Walnut Creek that was a grocery/ deli/gift/kitchen store. It was very cool and had all kinds of random things in it. Including Uncle Mike's Smoked Meats (see photo). So Uncle Mike was with us after all!

Bob and his family were planning on driving up Friday night (cause they had Thanksgiving with Maria's mom and Bob had to work on Friday) - and so we were expecting them to get there around 11pm or midnight. But then Bob said that they would probably leave their house at 11pm and if they got tired they'd stop at a hotel and so they'd be there anytime between 5am and noon. Since I was the one sleeping downstairs on the couch I asked Laura what I was supposed to do when they showed up at 5 or 6am and she just laughed at me and said they weren't coming that soon. Well naturally you can imagine how annoyed I was at her when I awoke to someone knocking on the door at 5:30am!! Beast! I told her they were coming that early!! So I got up and let Bob and family in and they set up camp on the living room floor by me. Since Bob and Maria drove and did not sleep they fell asleep pretty quickly, but then Ryan, Isabelle and Bobby were all whispering to me that they couldn't sleep, that they were hungry and wanted to watch TV. So at 6:45 I gave up and got up and we all ate donuts and told stories and laughed around the kitchen table. Then we crowded together on the couch and watched the Disney channel until everyone else woke up. We spent the day Saturday just hanging out and socializing. And we talked to our parents on Skype at 4:30 (they got all of us webcams for Christmas). It was pretty surreal talking to my mom from her hospital bed. But it was great to finally see her - we'd only been able to talk to my dad since her accident. She's gradually getting better and they're hoping that she'll be out of the hospital by Christmas. Which is a crazy long time, but at least she's getting good care. In fact one of the ladies from her Ward brought her some chocolate chip cookies from an "American recipe" she found. After the call the boys made a bon-fire and we roasted marshmallows and made smores - it was really fun. And the sunset was beautiful. Once the kids went to bed we played this game called telephone pictionary - it was hilarious. We were all crying with laughter. Basically you have a stack of paper and on the first sheet you write a sentence then pass it and the next person reads it and puts it to the back then on the next sheet they draw a picture based on your sentence and pass it, then the next person has to write a new sentence based on what the picture looks like, etc... So we had some pretty hysterical results. For example: "The lion loves to eat raspberry tootsie roll pops at the drive-in movie" turned into a drawing of a duck in the Oscar Meyer wiener mobile thinking about candy. Craziness.

Sunday was Lucy's baby blessing - so we all went to church together for that. It was very sweet, she's a sweet little baby. After sacrament meeting we had a little photo session in the hall. (Which I'm sure the classroom we were next to really appreciated.) Then Todd and I drove back home to NC. (Susy bought herself a one-way ticket home, so she and Lily are staying an extra week - I am so jealous.) The traffic was pretty gross, so the 8 hour drive turned into a 10.5 hour drive. Fortunately I had brought books on CD so we listened to The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince so that was a good distraction and made sitting in traffic for hours on end much more bearable. All in all it was a great time and it was wonderful to see everyone. Mark and I are already talking about when we can go up to Ohio together so that he can see everyone - so hopefully we'll be going soon and won't put too much time between visits....