Life with my Loves: Thanksgiving in India

Happy Thanksgiving from Landon & Layla!

I told Landon to put his arm around Layla and this is what happened:

Close.

** In no way did Layla need long sleeves and pants. I just REALLY wanted to dress her in a cute fall outfit.

We had such a wonderful time celebrating Thanksgiving, even though it's not a holiday at all in India! Of course, we missed being with our families terribly, but it made us even more thankful for the "India Family" we have to celebrate with. And we did have a great time together.

Thanksgiving was a big deal. We started planning a couple weeks ahead of time (actually, we started planning back in July when I packed our bag with French Fried Onions, Dream Whip and canned pumpkin). We created a master list of all the menu items we'd have, and then delegated them out to ~~the girls~~ the team.

Everyone cooked away the day before and day of, and to say we had a feast would be a massive understatement.

The spread

What was even more fun was that we wanted to make this feel like the real Thanksgiving that we would all have at home, so a few people made dishes that were special to their families' Thanksgiving meals.

Meghan made her family's broccoli cheese casserole

Laura made zwiebach

Jessie made a special kind of macaroni and cheese casserole. Her mom even mailed the special noodles over to her! Yum!

Chase made his mom's cranberry pear salad/relish. He even rehydrated dried cranberries bc that's all we can find here. Impressive, huh?

Here was our menu:

Mac & Cheese and Green Bean Casserole

Corn and homemade stuffing

Homemade crescent rolls

A massive crock pot full of mashed potatoes

Cheesy potato casserole and rotisserie chickens (we bought those from a restaurant)

We also a tray of fresh veggies and some fresh fruit cut up, and for dessert we had pumpkin pie, chocolate chip cookies, and a chocolate cake/pudding trifle. Yes, we had 2 kinds of rolls and 2 kinds of potatoes. Who doesn't do that on Thanksgiving?!

Needless to say, it was delicious, we were all stuffed, and all very thankful for the blessing of so much food when so many people around us have so little.

Sitting down to enjoy our feast together!

Layla and Landon loved the meal!

We surprised everyone and had already had Kyle's mom bring everyone's favorite candy from America with her, so we put those on everyone's place along with a special gift from Landon and Layla:

Turkey hands! The boys had Landon's hand and the girls had Layla's

After our Thanksgiving dinner, the kids went down for naps, and we did what everyone else does on Thanksgiving...the girls washed dishes and the guys watched football/napped.

The guys planned ahead and downloaded a couple of old KSU football games to watch.

We hung out and played games (and ate and ate) for the rest of the day, and the next morning everyone came over for breakfast then we went to the park to throw a football around. It felt just like Thanksgiving, aside from the fact that it was 80+ degrees outside!