thankful for such good food and even better company. can you picture it?

thanksgiving has been my absolute favorite holiday since i can remember. my mom fills her house with 20+ people each year and provides enough food to feed at least 100. the faces and the smells are familiar - the day is filled with unspoken tradition that even the most removed of us can't bare to break. each year that i get to be there, i am thankful.

this year, i was to bring three items. 1) orange jello salad 2) cranberry salad and 3) my standard sweet potatoes.

my dear mom-in-law, shirley, supplied me with two delicous jello salad recipes while i tried to mentally prepare myself to successfully produce my sweet potatoes again - this year, without incident. you may remember that last year, i dropped my entire batch down the basement stairs the morning of thanksgiving. nice.

luckily for me, the girls were so 'helpful' this year. they stirred and measured and tasted like pros. i sweated and cooked and carefully plotted my course until i finally it was time to load all of my bounty into the van, along with the family of course, and head out to my moms.

i drove with the precision of a nascar driver...careful not to take corners too fast for fear that the delicious butter/brown sugar mixture would spill out of my perfect sweet potatoes.

once we arrived, with all the excitement of children arriving at disney land, ellee un-clicked her seat belt and hopped out of her booster chair. she landed with a thump on the floor of the van. on any other day, this would be totally acceptable. but on this day - on thanksgiving day - i had specifically warned against such action. why? because, in an effort to secure the pans in a safe and sturdy location, i had strategically placed two giant pans of perfectly prepared sweet potatoes directly under ellee's seat. an error i now recognize en mass.

yes, ellee did smash about 1/4 of my potatoes with her giant great-dane-like feet as she hopped out of her seat. yes, brown sugar and butter spilled out all over the van. and yes, we entered my moms house looking more of a flurry of wild animals than of a family. it was a rough start - but it was salvaged and in the end, all was well and the remaining sweet potatoes were as tastey as i could have imagined.

below are some random shots of the meal and the people who make this day special to me. i hope that your thanksgiving was as filling and fulfilling as mine!

gobble gobble!