Thankful for Disaster Being Averted

This is by no means my first Thanksgiving to be in charge of turkey and all the trimmings. About 11:30 this morning though I was starting to get a little worried. Always in the past I have turned my oven on to 500° and then as soon as I put the turkey in turn it down to 300° for the rest of the cooking time. This gives the turkey a chance to get brown. Well 2008 was a different story. I put the turkey in and lo and behold it wasn’t until almost 25 minutes later that I remembered to turn down the temperature. The turkey was black and I was in tears. Laura said it was time to go buy a new turkey and Andrew tried his best to put a good face on a very bad situation. Thankfully Mark had gone to visit his cousins and wasn’t around. I was really dreading him coming home.
I spent the rest of the afternoon dreading dinner time and wondering how I would salvage this 20 lb. nightmare.
So here comes the turkey out of the oven:

and the sweet potatoes are cooking:

+ and Mark is reluctantly carving the bird:

Notice how I've had him carve the bird in the kitchen instead of my usual Norman Rockwell style at the table in front of everyone.

And then just like Festivius - it was a THANKSGIVING MIRACLE!

Laura snuck in behind her dad and grabbed a piece of the breast meat and it was juicy and tasty according to her. Yea hurray now let's eat:

Now here's the happy crew enjoying their dinner:



Now we're all cleaned up:

And it's one of my favorite Larsen family traditions - a full tummy and watching

Look who is happy now!

Happy Thanksgiving One and ALL!

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