Happy Thanksgiving (from Logan)

Happy Thanksgiving! It was a wonderful day.

This year Bret had to work on Thanksgiving afternoon. Since he wasn't going to have time to come home for dinner we decided to take Thanksgiving to him. It took some extra planning to make sure we had everything we needed for a proper Thanksgiving dinner. Last night Alison made a couple of pies and started her rolls. It turned out making the rolls ahead of time was not a great idea. We left them to rise overnight. They ended up not being as fluffy as usual and they tasted a little different. I don't think we will end up making rolls ahead of time again.

The drive to Logan was quite pleasant. It was a beautiful day. By the time we hit Ogden, there was a lot of snow on the ground, which was kind of fun. Fortunately, the roads weren't snowy or hazardous.

One of the Nielson family traditions is to fry a turkey for Thanksgiving. It ended up working out great in Logan. We set up the turkey fryer in the parking lot of Bret's apartment complex. It was a little bit redneck.

Here are some before pictures:

And here are some after pictures:

We stood around and talked while waiting for the turkey to cook. One nice thing about frying a turkey is that it cooks really fast. In fact, it was done in less than an hour. By the time the turkey was done everything else was ready. We had a delicious dinner including fried turkey, asparagus, and hollandaise sauce, stuffing, rolls and jam, and mashed potatoes and gravy.

It was great to enjoy a traditional Thanksgiving with family. As awesome as the food was the best part of Thanksgiving was spending time with people we love. 

After dinner, we needed a little bit of time to digest our food prior to enjoying some Thanksgiving pie. While we waited we looked at pictures from our trip to New York last Thanksgiving. It was the trip of a lifetime and we had so much fun reliving some of our favorite memories. 

An empty time square

Blowing up balloons

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

Crown at the Statue of Liberty 

#Nielson's in New York

Ice skating

Brooklyn bridge

Reliving some of these memories was a highlight of the day. After we went through all of our pictures we enjoyed some pie and cleaned up Thanksgiving in record time before Bret had to go to work. 

On our way out of town, we stopped to visit Kurt and his family. They were having a low-key Thanksgiving because they are getting ready to move to Ohio in two weeks. We got there right as they finished preparing their Thanksgiving dinner. We visited for a few minutes before they dug in. It was so good to see them and we will miss these visits once they live across the country. 

It was truly a wonderful Thanksgiving. In many ways, it was a little unorthodox, but it was also a lot of fun and we made some good memories. We have so much to be grateful for, but most importantly we are grateful for family and friends. They bring so much joy and happiness into our lives. We are truly blessed.