Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Today, it's Thanksgiving in the USA.  Before you ask how Norwegians celebrate Thanksgiving, they don't ;-) its an American holiday.  This is when the Pilgrims and the Native Americans came together and had a feast, remember.  But don't worry we had our Thanksgiving dinner this evening.  It was sort of an adventure to get all the ingredients.  A typical dinner with my family would be a big Turkey, cornbread dressing, purple hull peas, sweet potato something, mashed potatoes, fresh cranberry sauce, homemade rolls, and lots of desserts. Today, we had a turkey breast, it was absolutely delicious, moist & tender, and the best part it only took 90 minutes in the oven. For my cornbread dressing, it had a little too strong of a corn taste to it, but I used Polenta instead of corn meal for the cornbread (corn meal isn't available here in Stavanger, so I had to use a substitute).  I also didn't have any celery, so that could have been it too.  So for the first cornbread dressing in many years without my mom pre-baking the cornbread I did ok.  I will definitely need to do some practicing.  We had mashed sweet potatoes and they were delicious and some canned green beans.  For dessert, we picked something up in the frozen section of the grocery store, it was a chocolate cake, but for a better description it was a brownie bottom, a chocolate mousse with dark chocolate shavings.  It was YUMMY, both kids asked for more. Sorry I didn't take too many photos today, I was trying to get things prepared so we could eat at 5 when  Jan came home from work.  Thanks to Bestemor for going to the grocery store with us and doing a lot of translating and asking the employees questions to make my American meal.

our 1st Thanksgiving in Norway

Today, I have thought a lot about what I'm thankful for, since I am not searching through the newspaper looking for the super deals for Black Friday.  It's my family and friends, both at home in Texas and here in Norway.  These last few months, have flown by and I can't believe its almost December, but so much has happened in such a short time.  We found out we would be moving to Norway mid-Setpember.  We listed our home and sold it in less than 30 days.  Packed up all our belongings and had them either shipped to Norway via air freight or ocean or put in storage.  I have always been the type of person who prefers to do things myself, but I have had to ask for help many times over the last few months.  I don't think there was ever a time I asked for help that I was told, no.  Some of my asking for help wasn't for fun tasks or was at the last minute, prior to the move and now we are needing help with logistics on this side of the Atlantic as well.  I am so lucky to have such a wonderful family and group of friends, you have no idea how much you mean to me.