My thanksgiving surprise

A Thanksgiving to remember!! I know this post is quite late but it is necessary, for it ends with a bang!

So it was the night before thanksgiving(eve), and all through the house not a baby was crying... so we decided to do something about that... we faked labor to go into the hospital and get checked to see is baby was coming anytime soon, well i was at a very "bulging" 6 cm. The midwife did a "rough" exam to try to get things moving and they told us we could go home if we felt like it but we would for sure be back that night. So we went home made dinner and a good friend of our took the kids for the night, and we prepared to go to the hospital... then the next morning we woke up, the/n picked up two very disappointed kids and went shopping for thanksgiving dinner!

The family came in the night before thanksgiving, and andy and i prepared some dishes and bread that afternoon in preparation for the big event!! Then we all went out to my FAVORITE restaraunt "Indian Guru" YUMMO!

The next morning i woke up and made some Pumpkin doughnuts(recipe from "Healthy Bread in 5 minutes a day" which were fantastic... I think Pierce had at least 10 of them(they were 2 1/2 inches), and would have had more if we hadn't run out. My candy thermometer worked out just perfect for making the doughnuts puff up and not be greasy.

Then we played Some pretty intense games of Dominoes before starting our Vegan cooking extravaganza!! River learned what it was like to lose, and lets just say she didnt like it at all, and it is pretty hard to "throw" a game of dominoes :/

Then we boarded the Titanic!

We set the table with napkins folded in the "indian guru" style :) 

set out our Ikea ware, and menu!

We had originally planned on being in "Dinner dress" to add to the ambience, but the cooking wore us out and we decided to co casual... but river was so excited about getting all dressed up I let her do it anyways 

Our first course... Bruschetta, this turned out being every ones absolute favorite! Lemme tell you it was delicious!!
Olive oil wheat Bread from our '5min' book and tomato recipe from allrecipe.com   without the cheese of course ;)

The soup du jour... a dish we made the night before, and threw in the spinach before serving! Most of the recipes to follow (including this one) were made from This Book... Which I LOOOOOVE

Pierce enjoyed the soup, but then was way to tired to go on, so we put him down for a much needed nap!

Husband enjoying some pear salad. This salad required roasted walnuts, which i decided would be cheaper and fun to roast ourselves, so the first batch mom and i made wound up food for the opossums, the second batch turned out much better and it is surprising how much the flavor of walnuts change once roasted! 

Stuffed Provencal Mushrooms, we all agreed that this would be better with some sort of sauce, but they were still pretty darn good!

Some Ziti and Cauliflower, This won the Husbands Choice award

What is left of my Curry Shepherds pie, and some sparkling cranberry juice!

Husband made this one and i gave it the "prettiest thing at the table" award! so festive and the cranberrys shined like jewels it was so perfect we had to video chat with my brother in LA to show him! And it was yummy so perfect all around... this recipe was found HERE and i highly recommend it!

We then cooled our taste buds with some sorbet! 

 We had planned on having some Spanish style hot chocolate, but we were all so stuffed we gave up and planned that for later!

So after ALL of that food settled and we put the kids to bed, we decided to go black friday shopping, to pin down a couple of Leap pads for the cheeren(sound it out yankees) We left at about 9 came back at 2 am (black friday) empty handed......... bummed and bewildered and sore, being as it was now my due date and baby was still leaching from me. We hit the sack.... Well every one else hit the sack i was waking up every 15 minutes to go potty and then finnaly the contractions started at about 4:30, i told andy it was time to go, we hobbled out to the car and headed to our final destination as a 4 person family (mom and them stayed behind with the first two unsuspecting and sleeping kids)

at 5:30(yep an hour later) Oliver Rhys arrived!!! he was a beautiful sight

Now we are five!!!





(and counting)