Gobble Gobble

Even though Everly couldn't enjoy a delicious Thanksgiving meal this year her Daddy and I were very excited to start creating our own family traditions with our little dolly. We were also lucky enough to have Danny's brother, Casey, his wife, Jenn, and their daughter, Kaili join us all the way from Washington D.C. to celebrate.

I started the day by making sausage balls (a Southern favorite!) and serving cheese and crackers for a pre-meal warm-up. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade played in the background for a while (one of my all time favorite childhood memories), but was quickly switched to football as soon as the first game of the day started. The menu included ham and turkey (courtesy of Honey Baked Hams), Southern cornbread dressing (Aunt Mary's recipe), onion casserole (Maw-Maw Ponder's recipe), green bean casserole, corn casserole, cranberry sauce (Jenn Callaway's recipe), sweet potato casserole (another Aunt Mary specialty), and dinner rolls. I also served my homemade pound cake for dessert (made famous by Maw Maw Ponder).

Everly was quite content for most of the day and even took a nice little nap when it was time to eat so her Daddy and I could both enjoy a hands-free meal. After stuffing ourselves with the carb overload described above we all joined Everly in dreamland for a few hours in an attempt to recharge for round 2.

As our first Thanksgiving as a new family came to a close Danny and I reflected on all of the wonderful things we have to be thankful for in our lives. While our lives are not always perfect, we both agreed that we are incredibly blessed with love, happiness, good health, and amazing friends and family. Everly is truly the best thing that has ever happened to us and we are extremely proud to be her parents. There is absolutely no doubt that being a parent is the toughest job on this planet, however, I truly believe that it is also the most rewarding job in more ways than one. Over the past ten weeks there have been numerous times when I have doubted myself and had my strength, confidence, endurance and patience pushed to boundaries that I didn't even know existed until recently, but at the end of the day I am really proud of the people that Danny and I are turning into as parents and partners. Even though our relationship and our individual identities have been transformed and taken to an entirely different level since Everly's birth, we are slowly but surely finding new ways to define "us" again along the way.