Thursday, November 26

Jere and Kristen always invite us and Roy and Deb to their house for Thanksgiving. (Everyone else has other family plans.) However, this year COVID changed their plans so they delivered everything to our house.

They came about 10:30 am so everything could be put in the oven or wherever needed for our noon meal. Roy and Deb were cautious about coming here due to the virus, but eventually decided it would be more fun to have lunch with us than taking their meal back to their house (one hour away).

I felt kind of bad that they were going to so much work for our meal – while still preparing a meal for their five children (Josh, Jana, Ian, Jared and Jesse), plus Austin and Tucker. Emily was on duty with her nursing responsibilities.

Kristen has to be extra careful with contacts because she also works in the nursing field and if it is determined that she has been careless, she gets time off from work without pay.

Thank you, Kristen and Jere, the meal was AMAZING.

Kristen messaged me earlier in the day saying that there was no need for a place setting as they were bringing everything. That meant we only provided the silverware, salt and pepper and a dish for the cranberry butter. 🙂

Deb and Roy arrived just before noon. Because there was so much food, we decided to eat in courses. 🙂 Cerwin began by reading Our Daily Bread devotional for the day.

Deb took a picture of us with her cell phone, then sent it to me later in the day.

Our first course was pumpkin bread and cranberry/orange bread (topped with an apricot glaze.

Next we enjoyed sparkling grape juice, apple cider, cranberry/apple salad, dinner rolls with cranberry butter (pink ball in glass dish). We always have lots to talk about, so it was easy to eat in courses.

The smoked turkey (provided by Roy and Deb who received a free one at their grocery store and smoked by Jere) was incredibly delicious.

We call this bread filling, you might call it dressing.

Baked sweet potatoes

Mashed potatoes. There was gravy, but I forgot to get a picture of that. 🙂

Peas and onions.

Cranberry sauce. Kristen prepared some of the items in small plastic containers with lids, which made it easy for storing leftovers.

A small sweet potato pie with crust leaves and sugared cranberries. There was also a small container of sugared cranberries. They are like eating candy.

Pumpkin pie.

As you can see, Jere and Kristen went over the top in providing our meal. The extra blessing in having them deliver our meal – there was plenty for Deb and I to divide up the leftovers.

Our hostess gift #1 from Roy and Deb. She wanted it to look like Thanksgiving, but preferred the poinsettia, which made it look like Christmas.

That was great by me, because it will probably be our only Christmas decoration this year as we are not having a family dinner at our house.

Roy and Deb’s hostess gift #2 was this delicious-looking pumpkin roll. I think she bought it at a benefit bake sale. I put it the freezer for the future.

We had a fabulous afternoon with Roy and Deb – then to top off the day, God gave us this beautiful sunset.

As you can tell, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day.