7 Quick Takes-Thanksgiving

1. I never really used to be a big fan of Thanksgiving growing up, but now it's a holiday I genuinely look forward to. My mom's cooking is delicious, but I've found that I like adding my own "take" on traditional recipes. Parmigiano mozzarella mashed potatoes, roasted vegetables with olive oil, sea salt, freshly ground black pepper and Italian spices, apple spice brined turkey, etc. I love combining our old traditions with new ideas. Keeps things spicy! (Sorry, bad pun..)

2. I won't lie, I miss being around family around the holidays. It's something I've had to come to terms with as a military wife; there will be some years when we can spend Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays, etc with either my family or Will's, but more often than not we're living too far away to coordinate a get-together. I've found that spending the day with close friends, keeping in touch with our families throughout the day, and taking tons of pictures still makes for a wonderful holiday. How blessed are we that no matter where we have lived these past nine years, our wonderful friends are always there to come and celebrate with us, or they invite us to enjoy the holiday with their families?

3. Putting together a Thanksgiving dinner being pregnant with a toddler running around is definitely a challenge (to say the least), but I'm really proud of myself. I didn't save everything until the last minute, and I started the set up/baking/prepping a few days in advance. By the time yesterday rolled around, I didn't have a whole lot of cooking to do.

4. We had a holiday miracle occur-Murphy O'Dwyer did not attempt to steal any food off the counters of the table. I think I'm still in shock. He received turkey in his food dish as a "thank you for not ruining dinner by pulling down the tablecloth to get to the appetizers" reward.

5. Thanksgiving is always an animated, hilarious, loud, energetic blast when you have a bunch of Italians around the table. Just sayin'.

6. As much as I enjoy cooking and baking, I'm looking forward to not stepping foot in my kitchen (other than to get the already-prepared food out of the refrigerator) for the next couple of days. Mama needs a break.

7. As I said at the end of my last post, I have so, so much to be thankful for.

Happy day after Thanksgiving, everyone!! For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!