There was eating and decorating and.....

a run away Turkey!

by the way, that's a wheat roll in the picture, not a potato. Just thought I would let you know since Nicholas asked me why he never got a potato like that one LOL

I tell you, Thanksgiving Days are always full of surprises, if it's not fighting family members then it's the turkey that just didn't want to get eaten. Curt and I have never laughed so hard.

You all know that we deep fry our turkeys, I used to do the whole oven thing but it took forever and I could never get my turkey nice and juicy so about 3 years ago, we bought a deep fryer and started using that instead. The result, the juiciest, brownest, crispiest skinned turkey EVER.

So let me tell you how my day went. I woke up at about 1am on Thursday morning with the worst sore throat ever. It literally felt like someone was shoving a knife in there and twisting and prodding, it was so bad that it kept me up all night, by 7 am I just said "forget it" got up and started cooking.

By noon everything was cooked and we threw in the turkey and while waiting for it to fry, we started decorating the outside of the house. You know how that goes right? You keep all the decorations and lights from the year before and then you plug everything in and half of the light strands don't work. So you sit there and go one by one looking for the burnt out and exchanging lights until everything is working, because you know....that's easier than just going out to buy new ones? *ROLL MY EYES*

We have 3 reindeer, the animated ones, they move their heads up and down and side to side and one moves it's legs etc. We've had them since Idaho and they're getting so old that there's rust starting to seep through on some, but that is ok, at night no one will know. What they WILL notice is that one works fine, one has no lights down it's whole right side and the one that is supposed to move it's legs is suddenly motionless. What a sad sight! LOL

Now let me tell you about the turkey, I got a 20 lb one which is just ridiculous for us, but in my defense, I couldn't find any of the smaller ones at the commissary, I'm thinking all the retired couples got the itty bitty ones just for the two of them, so I got stuck with this huge bird...... which meant, only the bottom half of it was completely immersed in the peanut oil, the top wasn't and while it cooked, it didn't get brown. So we look at this thing and decide, well let's flip it over and let it sit for another 30 minutes. And that's when the adventure began LOL

I should have grabbed my camera but I was so busy laughing, it totally slipped my mind. So this is how it went.

Curt grabs the basket and pulls it up and there's this sad looking turkey in there, bottom part brown and top part pale. It looked like it had been to the beach while wearing a long sleeved shirt and shorts then fell asleep and got sun burnt.
So I say to him, ok let's flip it and I run inside to get a big fork, I come back out and try to stick the fork in it and start pulling but the darn thing is stuck to the bottom and my fork is bending. ABORT that idea!

Curt says "hey I have some new work gloves in the truck, still in the plastic, let me get that and then I can grab it". Ok, sounds like a great plan...NOT LOL
He comes back with his gloves on and proceeds to try and grab the bird, but it's hot and it's still stuck to the bottom and somehow wedged in the basket and just not budging. So I start laughing, which if you know me personally, you know if something funny or weird is going on, I just can't help it. He is struggling with this bird and I'm trying to hold the basket while he pulls it out and next thing I know this turkey flies past me and lands on the driveway. LOL

Our expressions were a mixture of surprise and OH.MY.GOSH that's our turkey. We run to it and Curt picks it up and turns it and slams it back in the basket. But now it has one of it's gigantic legs sticking out and he's telling me "shove it back in" and I'm trying but the darn leg won't move. So he grabs the leg, breaks it and wedges it into the basket. There ya go.....back into the oil, the heat will kill any germs LOL
Thankfully I had JUST finished sweeping the driveway and had actually hosed it down.....I must have known what was to come.

So after 30 minutes, we sit down to eat, but I have to get the turkey out of the basket and cut it, so I grab my trusty bent fork and shove it in the turkey breast and pull it up to get it out of the basket and guess what happens? It was like someone threw a grenade in there, the fork shreds through the breast and all this flying turkey meat hits me on the face and head. Curt and the kids start laughing, I'm standing there with a bent fork, a shredded turkey breast and meat all over me and the floor. You can't help but laugh at this, it's just too ridiculous for words LOL

Even if I had tried to, I couldn't have made this up. But we DID finally eat it and boy was it good.

We spent the rest of the day putting up our tree and decorating inside, it had started raining so we had to leave the yard decorations for later. There was a christmas tree, you know the prelit ones? Yeah, well we took it out of the box and some of the lights fell out LOL Then we put up the tree, Curt grabs the angel for the top and shoves the branches of the tree into it and then it topples over so he tries to pull the angel back out but it's stuck and he's pulling so hard that the top of the tree comes off with the angel. (hahahahahahahahah)
He's standing there holding this beautiful angel by the waist and there's a huge tree stuck to it's bottom, he's trying not to laugh but of course, I'm already in tears in the corner. He managed to get it loose and I reattached the tree and got the angel back on.

The rest of the night managed to go by without any further crazy happenings. It was a weird, funny but definitely unforgetable Thanksgiving.

So how did yours go? Any run away turkeys? Fighting family members? Crazy trees? Rain, snow, thunder and lightning? I want to hear all about it.

I leave you with some pics from last night.