Thanksgiving

I don't know how I can describe in words how scared I was to ruin Thanksgiving.  The week before David helped me go through a mini trial run.  I roasted a turkey and made a few pie crusts to make sure that they would come out light and flaky.  Lets just say the trial run of the bird was not so good.  David and I cleaned out the turkey and we got a lot of stuff out, and we looked for the bag that everyone talks about but we could not find it so we assumed that it did not have one.  Well as I was cooking the bird I thought that it was cooking really fast.  The temperature on the thermometer said it was fully cooked a whole hour before it was suppose to be done.  Needless to say that as we cut the turkey we found the bag in the back, not in it's cavity!!! So I guess the steam from the bag was making it read a hire temperature than the actual bird really was.  So glad we trialed it a week before :/  Or else I would have presented a raw turkey.

David' sister Sara and her husband Kevin and their two "babies" Lucian and Gaia came up on Wednesday.  We decided that since David only got Thursday off that we would play all day Thursday and then have our Thanksgiving Friday night.   So we headed up to Sedona and went off roading.  It was fun......but was way too cold.  Seriously I never thought I would get feeling back in my hands.  We felt so bad that they trailed their off road vehicles behind them all the way from L.A.  It was sooo cold that it was fun but at the same time really uncomfortable.  Here are some pics from that.  

 

Getting the vehicles ready to go!!

  

I can't help it here are a few shots of my beautiful baby boy!!

 

He's been such a goof lately.  He likes to make us laugh by making funny faces :)

 

 

Viggo wouldn't look at the camera because he was too focused on Gaia who I didn't notice got cut out.

 Poor little Gaia got soooo cold

This is a good indicator showing how cold it was.  Ariana would have never buckled the hoodie if she weren't freezing cold for fear that it would make her outfit look funny.  She did not contest it once.
 

Yup we hit snow, and that's when we decided it was too cold to keep going.

After off roading we searched for a place to eat but it being Thanksgiving it was pretty hard.  We ended up eating at Dairy Queen, and yes even though we were all cold we all did eat ice cream.  If you know anything about the Ettinger's is that ice cream is always a must even when its cold. We got home just in time to meet David's other sister Leah who was coming into town with her adorable family.  It was so much fun having family in the home.  Ariana loves Ella and Maci, and they played so much that night, and then the next day they played non stop.  They were exhausted by the end of the night.  When family visits, it always makes David and I a little sad that we are not closer to everyone.  But Arizona has been good to us, so we can't complain too much.  I was so glad that David's sisters came up, they helped me cook all day.  Literally we cooked all day.  I think we started at 10:00 a.m and we cooked until about 6:00 p.m non-stop.

Seriously I have never cooked so much food in my life.  My feet hurt, and so did my back.  And then I was sore the next morning.  Sad but true :(   I am so sad that I didn't get more pics on Friday of the kids and everyone.  I just forgot to take pics with all the cooking we were doing.  But her are some that Sara took.  It was a fun Thanksgiving, but I am grateful that for Christmas my mom is doing the cooking :0)

Here are my nieces.  They are so adorable!! I love when Ariana gets cousin time.  Its wonderful!! And what I love most is how well they all get along.  They never fight,  they just play until they drop. 

My boy love's Sara and Kevin's dogs especially Lucian ( the big pitbull).  I wish I had video.  I feel so sad for him, because he still wakes up every morning asking for Lucian and walks around the house looking for him.  I don't know how much longer we are going to be able to avoid having a pet