Happy Thanksgiving!

I want to wish everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving! We have so much to be thankful for. God is truly good to us all! Our oldest daughter, Amber, cannot be with us for Thanksgiving this year as she is so far away at school and had classes today. She has to work on Saturday and Sunday so it would not have been feasible for her to drive all this way for such a short time. I would have worried to death about her driving in all the traffic there will be tonight, anyway. We will miss her. At least she will be able to come home for a couple of weeks at Christmas.

Our niece, Rheanna, did get to come, however. She is the one that hubby, Tara and Keith went to pick up last Friday. At least they got to spend some time with Amber then as she is going to school in the same town in which Rheanna lives. So tomorrow Amber will be hanging out with Rheanna's brother, Ross. Ross and Amber are the same age and have always been very close. My kids father and Rheanna & Ross' father are identical twins.

Rheanna, Keith, and Tara helped me this evening to prepare some food for our Thanksgiving meal tomorrow.
Here is a picture of Rheanna crumbling up the cornbread for our cornbread dressing. She told me that she had a picture of herself from several years ago doing this exact same thing. It has been a tradition with us for several years for the kids to help me prepare the dressing and other dishes. Rheanna said she could hardly wait to eat the dressing! She said she just loves my cornbread dressing! In fact she had told my daughter, Tara, that the only reason she was coming here for the week was to be able to eat Thanksgiving dinner here! She was only kidding. She and Tara are best friends and she really wanted to spend time with Tara. But it made me feel good that she likes my cooking!
Here is another picture of Rheanna with the cornbread. She and Keith had already cut up all the bell pepper, green onions, celery, and yellow onion. Then Keith came in later and chopped up the boiled eggs for me. They really are great helpers!
Here is Keith chopping up the onions! Can you tell it was burning his eyes?
Here's Keith pouring the onions in the pot with the rest of the onion and celery mixture.
Tara had gone to the store for me while Keith and Rheanna were chopping and crumbling and then she had went into her room to do her hair. It takes a while for her to get all her hair straightened perfectly, you know! When she finished her hair she came into the kitchen and wanted to help me cook. All I had left to do was finish up our dessert called Yum Yum. The top of it is covered with a giant chocolate bar that has been grated. So she grated the chocolate bar.
Here she is grating away.
I told her the chocolate bar might be too big and it would be too much chocolate. But she said no, it could never be too much chocolate! She likes lots of chocolate! So she grated the whole thing.
Then Rheanna and Keith came in and wanted to help her spread the chocolate on the Yum Yum. Keith had disappeared by the time I got the camera ready and so I took pictures of Tara and Rheanna with really chocolaty fingers from the chocolate. They didn't mind cleaning off their fingers! I guess that chocolate really tasted good!
I was just going to take one picture, but since Rheanna's hair was in her eyes I had to take another one with it moved over so you could see her beautiful face! Are these not two beautiful girls!
Here is the finished Yum Yum! It has a crust on the bottom, then a cream cheese and sugar mixture next, then a pudding mixture next, then cool whip and then the grated chocolate! It really is yummy!
Of course we will also have turkey and other dishes. But I always like to get the cornbread dressing and dessert done the night before.

I am done in the kitchen for the night and am ready to just relax! Hope you all have a great day tomorrow!