Thanksgiving 2012

As is our tradition, we went out the night before Thanksgiving (not to Yard House as in years before) and had a lovely family dinner which consisted of zero fried food (some traditions have to die).

John-Paul really enjoyed the flat bread that came with his daddy's salad and wanted to go sit at his own table with his treasure!

Thanksgiving morning we packed up all our food and knives and assorted kitchen paraphernalia and headed over to my mom's house to spend the day with Adam's mom and my brother Casey (everyone else was out of town).
We snapped a couple pictures while we were all still clean ...

... and then went inside to eat breakfast and facetime with the Arkansas portion of the fam.

Then the "real cooking" began. But here's the deal ... our family (me and Adam mostly) have switched to eating Paleo and we really love it, seriously, we do, I think we will eat like this forever, we like it so much.  However, Thanksgiving is not traditionally a very paleo friendly holiday so we had to get creative... and by creative I mean look up recipes online.  

Here's what we decided on:

Bacon and Chive sweet potato biscuits, Sweet Potato Gratin, Warm Brussels Sprout Salad, Cauliflower Mashed "potatoes" , Bread-Less Stuffing, Turkey, Tri-tip and pumpkin pie bars for dessert! 

So needless to say, there was some work to be done so Casey and Adam set to working while I tried to help but John-Paul was not enjoying life much so I mostly just did crowd control! 

But once this happened...

 Then this could happen...

 Then I was actually able to help but all I really did was dishes and make the mash but I was just happy to wear my cute apron I got in Solvang on our honeymoon!

 So our meal was awesome and I enjoyed every bit of it!

John-Paul really enjoyed his too, but Bennett asked if he could go read some books and take a nap ... it was about 2:30 when we sat down and he was done for... poor kid had half a left over cheese burger from the night before later that night.

But despite our dismantling of the "traditional" Thanksgiving spread we were able to keep one tradition fully in tact ... the watching Elf while we wait for room to eat dessert!