A great thanksgiving

We were invited to spend Thanksgiving with some wonderful friends yesterday.  It was great.  These are some of my favorite friends in the world.  I absolutely adore their whole family and they made us feel so welcome like we were part of the family.  The kids had fun.  The food was great.  The company was even better.

Mama KK has a knack for decorating...this was just one of the tables all set up for lunch (gorgeous, huh?) -

David's two front teeth have been loose for a long time now.  He pulled one tooth out a few days ago and couldn't get the other one.  So he decided to let Coach do the "paper test"...where he wrapped a tiny bit of napkin around the tooth and pinched it....

...and IT CAME OUT!

Then W's uncle also pulled his front tooth out.  Check out our toothless boys - 

The boys - 

After we ate lunch with them, we went to another friends home for dinner and dessert and more laughs than I can count.

I am so thankful for my family.  For my home.  For my job.  For Diet Coke.  For our Troops.  And especially for sweet friends who make us feel like family.

Apple-Orange Cranberry Sauce Recipe

So.  This is the best cranberry sauce.  Ever.

My sister-in-law, Leslee, makes it every year and I love it (and I really really hate cranberry sauce - so to say I love this stuff is big).

Since we won't be together for Thanksgiving this year I decided I needed to make it myself.  I asked her if she was willing to share this super secret family recipe.  You know how some people are with their super secret family recipes.  Lo and behold - she said she would send it to me.  She texted me saying she took a picture and emailed it to me.  I expected to open up the picture and see her great grandmothers handwriting on an old tattered and stained piece of paper for the recipe that has been passed down for generations  Nope.  Not even close.  It's a picture of a page out of a recipe book.  WHAT?  I realize that most recipes are adapted from recipes out of recipe books....but I was disappointed that this wasn't a super secret family recipe.

I have changed that.

I now present you with Leslee's Super Secret Apple-Orange Cranberry Sauce (aka a recipe out of an unnamed recipe book - I'd love to give credit where credit is due but the picture doesn't show the name of the cookbook...if she will provide me the cookbook name I'll happily update this post to include it).

Leslee's Super Secret Apple-Orange Cranberry Sauce

1/2 orange
2 cups water
1 Granny Smith apple
3 cups fresh cranberries
1 1/4 cups sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves

Squeeze the juice from the orange half and set the juice aside.  Remove the membrane (white stuff) from the inside of the orange shell and discard.  Cut the shell into small dice.  Put into a small saucepan with the water, bring to a boil and cook for 10 minutes.

Drain and set aside the orange peel.

Peel, quarter and core the apple, then chop into small pieces.  Place in a saucepan.

Sort the cranberries, discarding any soft ones.

Add to the apples along with the reserved diced orange peel, the reserved orange juice, the sugar, cinnamon and cloves.

Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to a simmer and cover partially.  This is what it looks like as soon as you mix all the ingredients.

Simmer gently, stirring occasionally until the sauce has thickened, the apples are tender and the cranberries have burst.  This will take 15-30 minutes.   The finished product will look like this.

Transfer to a bowl and let cool before putting into fridge.  Can be served cold or at room temperature.

If you make this, please let me know what you think of it!  I'd love some feedback.  And I'll let Leslee know what you think of her super secret family recipe.  :)

Thanksgiving - Part II

We spent 6 days over Thanksgiving at a great RV park in Georgia, called Pine Mountain - An RVC Outdoor Destination.

This was our 2nd annual trip there. We went last year with Brad's family and this year my mom and Clint also joined in on the fun. They just purchased a 5th wheel and this was their first trip in it.

We had a great time.

This is where we ate many of our meals...

The campground provides a Thanksgiving lunch for all of the campers - and everyone brings sides. It's nice having lunch prepared for us - and all we had to bring was one side. We plan to making this a yearly thing.

This is Rich and Leslee....they are so hard to photograph....one or both of them normally acts like a goober in every picture. But this one is a good one!

We went to Wild Safari and saw lots of very cool animals and were able to feed them from the van we rented.

David was not brave at first, but when he realized the animals wouldn't bite he began getting a little more willing to feed them the food - rather than chuck it at their faces or down their throats. :)

This is something we saw a LOT of.....ewww.

Herrington Family shot - we haven't had one of these in 2 years -

Our little family -

We went to Callaway Gardens one afternoon to walk around. We arrived about an hour before they were closing so we only got to go to the Butterfly Exhibit and the gardens. The Butterfly Exhibit is a neat thing to see, but there must not be a ton of butterfly's in November....we saw some, but not a lot.

David did get to hold one that my mom got to land on this orange.

We also made it to the vegetable garden, which is my favorite. We've seen it twice - around Thanksgiving...I'd love to go back during the summer to see what the summer crops look like. I heard that you can buy the surplus from the garden. That might be a good camping trip for us next summer.

And finally, we went to the Callaway Gardens Christmas light display. We went last year and decided to go again this year. It takes about 45 minutes to drive through and you see lots of lights. I mean LOTS. Our favorite was the 12 Day of Christmas....which I am currently teaching David the words to!

Olivia really loves getting her picture taken.

David? Not so much. I have very few pictures of him from the weekend. :(

Thanksgiving - Part I

I am thankful for these three awesome kids.