5th Annual Thanksgiving Dinner

First of all, this is my first blog post, so I will preface this by saying I don't quite know what I'm doing - hence the ginormous picture and writing going across Kevin's head at the top of the page. With that said, our 5th annual Thanksgiving dinner is exactly the kind of thing I want to start blogging about, so this is a perfect first blog post topic!

In college we always had a big Thanksgiving dinner with the whole chapter at the Phi Mu house. So, our first November out of college didn't feel complete without a Thanksgiving dinner to look forward to. Amanda and I had just moved into an apartment in Atlanta together so we decided to invite our pledge class to our new place for a Thanksgiving dinner! It was a big hit and we have been doing it ever since then.

So...this year was the 5th year! I can't believe 5 years have passed...

Year 1 (2007) Posing with our cute mugs Andrea's mother (also a Phi Mu) got all of us.

Year 2 (2008)

This was the year we had to make a pit stop on I-75...

Year 3 (2009) Kevin strategically proposed the day before this Thanksgiving Dinner so I was especially excited to see everyone this year :)

Year 4 (2010) We had it in mine and Kevin's apartment this year - first year of Amanda and I not living together!

The boys are not aloud to eat with us during dinner so we always send them off to the bar and let  them come back for leftovers :)

And finally, Year 5 (2011)!

 

This year we got to have our Thanksgiving Dinner in Amanda and Craig's beautiful home they bought this past Spring. We stepped it up a little this year as we have gotten a little older...we had a real turkey (not the sliced ham Amanda and I always bought from Honey Baked Ham), real dressing, lots of other delicious food that we were able to warm up in Amanda's double ovens (our apartment oven broke one year the weekend of the Thanksgiving Dinner and we had to heat stuff up in our toaster oven!), good wine (something other than Two Buck Chuck), and a gorgeous table setting...and of course the wonderful conversation and catching up together was great as it always is. We caught up on new jobs, future plans for houses and babies and getting married, and signed a card for one sister who lives in Alexandria, VA and just announced that she is expecting and due in May (congratulations J. Sauls, I mean J. Cox!!). 

Attendance has not been quite as high the past couple years as it was the first couple years as girls have moved far away and we have likely just seen each other at a wedding or bachelorette party, but no matter how many are there it is always a wonderful event and memories are made.

A few other words to describe this year's Thanksgiving Dinner... Smokefoot, bathroom time, leaves, LSU flag, apple cider, never-ending pumpkin muffins, S jewelry, wake up craig! pitcher sized pints for the boys, and I threw it on the ground.  Already looking forward to next year!  Maybe it will be in mine and Kevin's new house...