Sharing

Today, my friend Melissa and I prepared a traditional Thanksgiving meal for 25 of our Japanese students friends.  Neither one of us has ever cooked an entire meal for such a large crowd but we pulled it off beautifully.  Aside from the issue I had making the gravy {sorry ladies, that's why lunch was delayed today!} everything turned out perfectly.  Our menu included

Turkey

Ham

Stuffing {my family recipe}

Angel Biscuits {Melissa's family recipe}

Green Bean Casserole

{my family uses the French's recipe, hers uses the Campbell's so we made a small dish of each}

Broccoli Casserole

{again, different family recipe's so we made 2 dishes, mine is similar to this one}

Sweet Potato Casserole

Cranberry Sauce

Corn

Mashed Potatoes

Pumpkin Pie & Pecan Pie

Each of the ladies also had a small bag of my homemade chex mix to take home with them.

I'm still in shock that we fit all 27 of us into my house, but after a little living room furniture tetris, we made it work

After we ate, we played Pictionary for a while.  Melissa and I drew while the ladies guessed.  Here are the words we went through.  They did AWESOME considering Melissa and I are NOT artists!

Melissa and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves today and I hope think the ladies did too!  Miraculously, my house was clean and back in order by 430 which made me really happy, I expected it to take me days to clean up!

I am so grateful to know these women and be able to share our American traditions with them!

{I cannot believe they got Buster to sit for a photo!  He never does that for Jason and me}

Speaking of Buster, he was so well behaved today...well almost.  He was great while the ladies were here.  After they left and we cleaned up a bit we had to return the tables and chairs we borrowed so we loaded up Melissa's van and headed out.  When we returned, I found the dog INSIDE the trash bag eating the food scraps...apparently I had forgotten to take the giant trash bag we used outside before we left!  I couldn't be too mad at him, it was funny and totally my fault!