Thanksgiving is here...almost

I don't know about you, but I love holidays where all you do to get ready is cook and clean.
There is nothing more fun than cooking a big meal for friends and family and having it all eaten in 1/2 an hour. I just think that it is one of my favorite things to do for those that I love. The only drawback is that we are far away from family and that is hard. We wish that we lived closer, didn't have such grown up kids with responsibilities, or didn't have church callings that kept us here. Holidays are about family, so any of you family who read this and want to be fed a good meal dinner is Saturday at 3:30pm.

One of the things about living far away is that you make friends who become your family. We have been blessed with the best friends ever, some who have immigrated here to Canada. We also have been blessed to have a new "Uncle" added to our family who comes from a Ukarainian background so we have discussed many different holiday traditions that these wonderful people have. Some of our best friends are from Russia and boy do they eat different food for holidays than we do. The greatest thing about all of this is that we have learned to enjoy new foods and are now getting braver in trying to make them on our own. Where does all of this lead...well...sour cabbage rolls. This is a new item on our Thanksgiving menu this year and we made them for the first time last weekend. We were able to freeze two containers full for Thanksgiving dinner. Now we just need to keep making one menu item each night and we will be good to go for Saturday. Just to entice your tastebuds here is the menu:

Ham- I know, I know, no turkey, but when you already have 2 big hams in the freezer how could you justify spending money on a turkey, besides Christmas for sure will be turkey.

Scalloped potatoes-or funeral potatoes as they are sometimes called.

Stuffing

Sour Cabbage Rolls

Orange Jello salad- can't do the signature Pistachio, as one of the guests will die if he eats nuts!! Maybe we could make both kinds???

Zucchini

Corn

Carrots

Sweet Potatoes

Fresh bread

and for dessert
Pumpkin Pie or Ice Cream, or both if you insist!!

We got Thanksgiving napkins too!!! Can't wait!!!

Again, anyone who is hungry, you are always welcome!

We are so lucky to have a Temple in our city that is literally only 5 minutes from our home. We try really hard to go each week and even though the challenges of life don't change, how we handle them sure does. Recently a dear friend of ours who was less active for 30 years, just went to have her own endowments, what a fantastic experience it was to see her so ready for the covenants and blessings that she received there. This weekend the youth in our ward get to do baptisms for the dead and it will be Reid's first time. He is very excited and well prepared as Jordanne taught an awesome lesson on it for Family Home Evening this week. It will be so fun to watch the "baby" of the family perform this sacred ordinance for the first time.

Well Jordanne is, much to her dismay, officially growing up. Though she has tried to fight this, time just keeps rolling along. Today, she applied for Nursing!! She is going to proudly follow in her Aunt Jess's footsteps and become a nurse. It is really exciting to see her go forward with this endeavour. We are proud and VERY thankful to all of her Aunties who have set such good examples!!

As usual time is short. We love you all, especially the blogs and pictures. Tara, your pictures of the farm were awesome!! Jess, we love love love watching your babies grow!!
The Smiths