North Carolina Thanksgiving

Some of our favorite friends live in North Carolina now… Jared, Reagan, and Jesse. We are currently at the end of a 25 day whirlwind tour of the U.S. We saw family all over Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico (putting 2,300 miles on a borrowed Honda Accord to prove it). We went to conferences in Indianapolis and Atlanta (unfortunately, we had to separate to do this). And now we’re in North Carolina, reunited and staying with Jared and Reagan.

We’re exhausted and burned out, but being here has been really refreshing, not least because we are staying with the most gracious hosts imaginable. Not only did they force us to sleep in their own bed, but they have also been working for days to prepare an absolutely glorious Thanksgiving feast, which happens to be authentic in the sense that it is shared between English pilgrims (us) and American peeps (them)… and it’s even more legit because Candice is actually Native American :).

So on the list of what we were eating today for our early Thanksgiving: candied yams, green bean casserole, broccoli and rice casserole, mashed  potatoes, cornbread dressing, Cornish game hens (instead of turkey, since there were only five of us), a brown sugar ham, brown & serve rolls, an apple pie, a pumpkin pie, and a pumpkin roll (which is a kind of dessert with pumpkin bread rolled up with cream cheese/cool whip filling)… in other words, plenty of food to feed the cast of a middle school Thanksgiving musical. It was all homemade and all wonderful… thank you Jared and Reagan (mostly Reagan!).

Here’s the cast of characters…

The guys:

The girls:

The food (and that’s not even all of it):

The pumpkin roll:

We were thankful, and happy.