Happy Late Thanksgiving

Hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving.  We had a lot of fun at my Aunt Kathy's house.  We got up pretty early and went for a walk on the trail.  Before we left for our walk I put clean, pierced sweet potatos in the oven at 400.  We got back about an hour later and the sweet potatoes were done.  I peeled them and mashed them and put them in a casserole dish.  They were delicious so check out the recipe below.  It was the first time I was completely satisfied with how they came out and I made the recipe myself this year!  After I got those in a dish, I got ready and we headed over to Aunt Kathy's for food, family, and fun.  We started prepping food right when we got there.  I had a little time for ping pong in between!

These are pictures from Wednesday, but we played ping pong on Thanksgiving too.

I beat my brother 2 times!  I was the only one to beat him:)  Victory is sweet.

Looks like we are doing good right?

 

My mom and me were playing my dad and brother. 

 After a few games of ping pong, it was back into the kitchen to prep lots more food.  Check out our snack table!

 Meats, cheeses, crackers, chips, dip.

Dessert, dessert, dessert

There was more real food obviously:)  We had all the traditional Thanksgiving food.  We fried 4 turkeys, baked 1 ham, and had all kinds of sides.  Our sides were squash casserole, corn casserole, green beans, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, cherry fluff, and rolls.  

 This is my plate and I went back for more cherry fluff, bread, and Sweet Potatoes.

I was in charge of making the sweet potatoes!  There were glazed pecans under the mallows....so delicious!

Favorite Sweet Potato Casserole

5 sweet potatoes (medium-large)

1/4 cup salted butter

3 Tbsp. brown sugar

1 Tbsp. honey

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup pecans

1 Tbsp. butter

cinnamon sugar

1 cup miniature marshmallows

Preheat oven to 400.  Wash and pierce sweet potatoes.  Place sweet potatoes directly onto oven rack and bake for about 1 hour (I didn't flip mine but you could).  Let cool for about 15 minutes and peel them.  

In a medium bowl mash sweet potatoes with 1/4 cup butter, brown sugar, honey, cinnamon, and salt.  Place in casserole dish.  In a separate bowl, melt 1 Tbsp. butter and stir in pecans.  Once pecans are well coated, put them on top of sweet potatoes and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.  Bake in oven at 350 for about 20 minutes.  Top with miniature marshmallows and broil until mallows are nicely browned.  Enjoy.

Obviously I was very full after Thanksgiving food so I went outside for more ping pong and washers.  I am glad we had fun distractions because otherwise I would eat all day and felt sick:)  After a couple hours we had coffee and dessert.  I ate mixed nut clusters because they were the only dessert I wanted.  I usually eat pies but my Aunt Kathy made mixed nut clusters that were so good I had to eat them.  I also had a barkin dog.  It was all very yummy.  Later that night after more games and fun I had more bread and turkey!  What a fun fun day we had.

 These are the awesome nut clusters.  Melt almond bark and semi-sweet chocolate chips in the microwave and then add mixed nuts.  Stir well and scoop into muffin papers.

This is my Dad's side of the family.  We had a big crew..isn't it awesome?