Feast Prepared. Faces Stuffed. Mission Accomplished.

This year was our first Thanksgiving on our own, and we decided to go all out.  I (Autumn) am a listmaker, hence the above list in preparation for the big day.  Notice pumpkin pie is already checked off as I made it the night before.

These little guys were made from the extra pumpkin filling and pie pastry.  It was also in an effort to keep Casey from cutting into the pie the night before ;)

Behold our tiny Northern Ireland oven.  It cooks better than any oven we've had before, but this picture doesn't do justice to the size of this thing.  I have to admit I was a bit nervous about the timing of cooking everything.

First thing on the list was to make the Sweet Potato Souffle.

Then.... the bird....

We bought a frozen turkey and decided we would do all the gross turkey things ourselves.  Casey volunteered to be the gut scooper, however, there was no sign of the infamous baggie of innards we were supposed to find.  So, assuming they did it differently here in Northern Ireland, Casey proceeded to violate the turkey until we thought everything was out.  Then as I went to clean the bird, out fell the baggie from the other end.  We didn't know what a "clean" turkey looked like since we hadn't done it before.

Then we got said turkey situated in the pan and in our tiny Easy Bake Oven.  Here's the done bird....

Notice anything odd about him?  After looking at a gajillion turkey cooking websites and watching a video, you'd think we would've figured out we had our turkey upside down! It still tasted good :)

Casey did an excellent job carving turkey lurkey and arranging him on the plate.

 Our finished feast!

Yum!

Oh, by the way,  we have a patio area that we have been waiting for our landlords to come close in since September.  They decided to come do it on our Thanksgiving, so we had workers outside our kitchen all day.  In this picture, there is a guy on a ladder just outside the window.  Just another joy of Thanksgiving abroad.  They had no clue why we were making so much food.

This is a happy me after making a successful meal!

We finished it all off with our afternoon snack of coffee and pumpkin pie.  

What a great Thanksgiving!  We even got to Skype with our families and I got to see my Grandma get tickled.  Priceless.

Yes, we are thankful :)

Thankfulness...

Thanksgiving is one of my (Autumn) favorite times of year.  I love the simplicity of it and the memories I have with family.  Casey and I have a lot to be thankful for this year:

We are thankful for each other.
We are thankful for Christ and His sacrifice for us.
We are thankful for our families and their love for us.
We are thankful for church family and being where we are right now.
We are thankful for all of you and your prayers for us, and of course, for reading our blog :)

On Thursday, I (Autumn) will be attempting my first Thanksgiving meal, a far cry from my Grandma's turkey and dressing, but I am sure it will be better than Snoopy's popcorn and toast on the Peanuts Thanksgiving. At any rate, I am on a turkey hunt this week in Belfast....

We cannot say again how thankful we are...
Casey and Autumn 

"Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." ~1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

Randomness....

For the last few weeks we have settled into a bit of "normalcy" here...no sight seeing trips as Casey has been working hard on assignments and I (Autumn) have been finishing up a translation project.  However, we do have a bit of randomness to share about everyday life....

We use skeleton keys to open our doors.  It makes me think of The Secret Garden.  Anyway....

I have a few flowers around the flat (actually got them in September, but just getting around to photographing them)--an orchid, some cyclamen and some pansies.  So glad we got some flowers...they add a nice cheeriness on dull days!

Casey just HAD to have a picture of this.....

He thinks Kurl Up and Dye is the funniest thing, so it made the randomness page. If you can't tell in the picture, it's a hair salon. Every time we walk near it we get a good laugh.

Just across the street from Kurl Up and Dye is the butcher we like to visit....I can't help but think of Scotty McCreery when we go there.  If you don't know who he is, that's ok....just enjoy the fact that we go to the local butcher and not Wal-mart to get our meat.

The last few days have been absolutely BEAUTIFUL and as you can see we have changing leaves!  Yay!  We have a huge park just down the street from us and we took a nice walk there yesterday.  Enjoy...

 Well, there you have it....

We are doing well and enjoying learning new things out and about and hoping for even more sunny weather!