Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We had great little Thanksgiving down here with a few friends at our place. For an appetizer we had real Wisconsin summer sausage and spinach dip. Our main course was of course, turkey, with sides of creamed spinach with artichokes and mushrooms, mozzarella and parmesan crusted mashed potatoes, apple cider and honey flavored sweet potatoes with pecans, homemade dinner rolls, stuffing, and homemade pumpkin pie with homemade whipped cream. This was our first time making a turkey so we watched a lot of Food Network the week prior and learned some great tips. The day before Thanksgiving Rachel made a brine and we soaked the turkey for 24 hours in the brine solution with ice to keep it cool. This technique worked great, the turkey was very flavorful and moist. The only dish that did not turn out was the creamed spinach with artichokes and mushrooms. Rachel gave me the job of getting all the water out of the thawed spinach, her exact words were, "make sure you get all, every last drop, of moisture out of that spinach." I thought great, I can help and this is something I can't screw up. Well, apparently I got too much of the water out so the spinach dish wasn't creamy, but dry and the spinach was clumped together. To remedy the situation, Rachel got Fronk family advice from Aunt Diana, "just add more cream cheese and butter," can't go wrong with that.

Our friends showed up around 2:00 pm and we ate at 2:30. One of the guys was a friend who graduated from UW a semester before I did and is a few months ahead of me in Nav school. The other friend is from my flight and he came with his wife and their one year old daughter. After dinner we watched the rest of the football game and some of our wedding video. Overall it was a great time even though we wish we could've been home, but we can't wait till Christmas and see everyone!