Thanksgiving Dinner at Casa de KASA

After earning our Thanksgiving dinner at the Turkey Trot, we had a massive gathering of all our extended family both on my side and Kevin's side (minus only my parents-not bad, eh?). Total number in attendance? 2(ohgoodlord)8. Plus it was Kevin's 31st birthday. Happy Birthday Kev! And since it was his birthday, he wanted to do all the cooking on his own. He wouldn't even let me help him. Well, he let me help with the menu decisions, and I got to do all the baking beforehand, but other than that, I was on clean-up/hostess duty. Which was great by me! I made 3 pies: Light Mint Chocolate Mousse, Double Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake, and a Cinnamon Blueberry Pie. I also made the biscuits- whole wheat pumpkin and classic Joy of Cooking white dinner biscuits. Flaky hot goodness that went right from the oven to everyone's plates (I popped them in the oven as soon as the turkey and ham came out). Here's how awesome Kevin is- he made the following:

*French onion soup, from scratch (everything was from scratch), and man was it ta-STY!
*turkey and (spiral-cut-honey) ham
*baked potatoes and sweet potatoes
*dirty rice (instead of stuffing, 'cause I can't stand the stuff for whatever strange reason- I like everything in it! Just not combined and cooked in a turkey, I guess.)
*green beans and bacon
*green salad
*asparagus
*cranberries (of which there is so much left over that I made fruit leather out of the extra)
*gravy
(plus there were my biscuits and pies, and Kevin's mom surprised him with a sheet carrot cake, also from scratch of course!)
*Bottles upon Bottles of wine, sparkling lemonade and cider. I don't even WANT to know what our our recycle collectors think of our house with the amount of bottles they will be picking up next week! Ha!

Now for a picture for you to appreciate how many people this is all in one place (Kevin got permission to borrow some extra tables and chairs from his school in order for this dinner to happen):

You can't even see everyone from this angle, so here's a shot from the other end (and again it's hard to see faces, but you get the idea):

And a picture of a couple of my cousins- Dave and Michael, and my brother Scott being himself.
And then some twin-on-twin ping-pong action with Aunty Alice and Ashton against Sean and cousin Georgie.


It was a bit of some all around crazyness trying to get dinner on the table, but once everyone was settled, there was a lot of passing, and all went smoothly. It was wonderful to catch up with family from as far as Alaska and L.A., and even from across town! Wonderful food, and memories~ Thanks everyone for traveling to the south side of Reno, and letting us host Thanksgiving this year!

Happy Turkey Trot Thanksgiving!

I am happy to report that many of my extended family participated in the 10th Annual Sparks Turkey Trot with me (my first!) before coming over to my house for an even more extended Thanksgiving dinner. We all met beforehand for a quick picture before heading up to the street for the race start~ first, my library posse, Dave and Turi:

Next is the family picture. From left to right- Lori, her husband Mike, Aunt Linda, Me, and Lori and Linda's parents. (Not pictured, Sara, because I couldn't find her until about 2 minutes before the race started.)

Linda and Lori did the 10k with me, and their parents did the 2 mile walk! L&L were going pretty quick- they started ahead of us in the initial sardine pack, and Sara and I didn't catch up to them until mile 5.5. It was a chilly wait for the race to begin, but it didn't rain on us, and was actually the perfect temperature for a run. :) Sara and I kept to an almost 9 minute mile pace, running negative splits for a finishing time of 56 minutes even (although our watches said 55:39 since we didn't start them until we reached the start line). Thanks so much for running with me Sara, even though it's difficult coming up here from sea level to run at this altitude. You set a perfect pace, and I greatly enjoyed our run together! Here is a 3 second video clip of Sara and I finishing, compliments of my Uncle Paul:
My friend Dave also finished the 10k in under an hour. As for Turi, he took off with the fast runners on the front line with a 45 minute goal to beat- which he shattered with a 43:16 new P.R. Yeah, congrats Turi!