A Very Happy Thanksgiving

Wow, what a weekend!  I was so sad to see it end. It's not that I had to get back to work or anything, it was just nice to have some family in the area to entertain.  We were so happy to have Malu's (my hubby's) siblings here, not only to celebrate Thanksgiving, but to meet Baby V for the first time.  As expected, they were completely enamored by their little niece, and she by them.  It was just so much fun.  So let me break the weekend down for everyone.

~Wednesday~

Baby V met her Uncle Felix for the very first time.



Felix is Malu's younger brother (born right after him) and he came all the way from North Carolina to visit.  He's in the Marines and stationed at Camp Lejeune.  We took him to the new PX and pretty much just hung out for the entire day.

~Thursday~

I got up at the butt-crack of dawn to start cooking all the dishes for our Thanksgiving meal, including my very first turkey!  While doing this, we tuned in to the Macy's parade and waited for Malu's other siblings to arrive from California.  They had departed the evening before and they didn't arrive until about 9:30 Thursday morning.  We had a huge breakfast waiting too!

So...

Sina finally got to meet with her Uncle Vaea (he's younger than Felix).  He attends college in Pasadena and also plays football for that school.  He brought two of his teammates (who happen to be his friends/classmates from back home--in American Samoa).

She also got to meet her beautiful Auntie Silulu (who is the eldest of Malu's siblings). 

I'm not sure if I mentioned this to you guys before, but Silulu (we call her Lulu) is an aspiring actress who is currently attending a college in Long Beach, California.  She also went to the Olympics in Beijing two summers ago and competed for American Samoa in judo.  I love having her around.  She has such a bubbly personality (much like Malu) and her laughter is so contagious. 

Anyway, I'd slaved away all morning in the kitchen and made meatballs, cheese dip for appetizers, two different kinds of sweet potato casseroles, a macadamia nut pie for dessert.  And my turkey...

...came out great!  In this picture, I'm in the process of moving the turkey to a platter, but it came nice and golden brown and so moist!  I actually brined the turkey in a recipe that I got off of another blog.  Apparently the recipe is from Emeril and I'm definitely going to use it every Thanksgiving from here on out.

Our friends, the Hermosillo's (Melissa and Ismael, shown below), hosted Thanksgiving for our family and a few of our other friends that afternoon.

To say that we had tons of food was an understatement.  Every space on the table and on her kitchen counters was covered in food.  I'm not even joking.

And I didn't even get pictures of all the food.  It was INSANE.  Um...did I mention that we had 3 turkeys?  And we had such a great time.  We were able to work off some of what we ate by playing Just Dance 2 on the Wii.  I'm not going to incriminate anyone by posting those photos.  Just know that they are hilarious!

~Friday~

The boys had stayed out late Thursday night so we actually spent most of Friday morning relaxing at home.  I didn't feel like facing the Black Friday crowds either.  We'll be moving soon, so much of our Christmas shopping will have to take place while we're on leave in Colorado and Utah.  But later that night, we took the crew for an authentic Mexican meal at a restaurant nearby.  I mean, what's a visit to El Paso without having Mexican food? 

~Saturday~

This was the first time that Malu and his brothers and sister had been in the same place and at the same time in years.  So I thought it would be perfect to capture this on film.  I scheduled some family photos to be shot by a good friend of mine.  So that's what occupied our Saturday morning.  I'll have to post those pictures when I get them, so stay tuned!

For months, Malu had been itching to take a huge group of people to go paintballing.  The fact that he got to take his siblings and some friends of ours totally made his day (or maybe his entire year).  The paintballing place is literally two miles from where we live.  You guys should have seen how ecstatic Malu was that day.  It was priceless.

Here are a few photos from that day:

Here's the before paintballing picture...

One of my baby and I

and the after paintballing photo

Great times!  I think Malu is still coming down from the high he felt that day.

Later that night, we enjoyed a dinner at a new Vietnamese restaurant in town.  Delicious!  Lulu left a few hours after that.  She had to go back to CA early enough to allow her to rest before returning to work on Monday. We miss her so much already!

~Sunday~

The boys left and Malu and I spent the rest of the day thinking about how grateful we were to have had that time with our family and friends.  We also took some time to give thanks to God for so many things...

for dying on the cross to absolve our sin

for each other

for our little baby girl

for the love of family and friends

for jobs that we love

for our home

for nice things

for a free Country to live in

(and the Soldiers that defend it)

(nutella)

and soooo much more.

I hope all of you had a very Happy Thanksgiving as well.  This week, I am finishing up the last of my clearing/outprocessing.  Next week, our household goods are getting packed up...and then we're up and out of this place! 

Have a great week!