The Banning Family: Thanksgiving 2009

We celebrated Thanksgiving with my side of our family on Wednesday night at our house. We’ve never been able to host our family and extended family before because of the size of our house, but this year we were able to open our home to my family and we were so glad! Of course we had way too much food…roast, mashed potatoes, corn casserole, green beans with butter and brown sugar, black eyed peas, chicken and rice casserole, marinated meatballs, and homemade rolls. For dessert we had homemade white cake, homemade chocolate pie, fruit salad, and pecan pie. We had so much fun while we ate and after…the girls sat around the dining room table and talked while the guys sat in the living room and watched “National Lampoon’s Vacation”. It was so great to hear all the laughter and joy filling our home! While I had my sister here, she took some pictures of the 3 of us for our Christmas cards this year…

I’m not going to post the picture that we chose just yet…I’ll post it when our Christmas cards get in the mail!

On Thanksgiving Day, I got up and cooked double batches of hashbrown casserole, corn casserole, and green beans with butter and brown sugar. We celebrate Thanksgiving with Stephen’s family at his sister’s house and many of his several cousins and their families come too. I’d say there were 30-40 people, including kids there on Thursday. We had another huge spread of food and enjoyed each other’s company.

We had one of Stephen’s cousins take a picture of our family…Front Row: Hannah, Hallie, Jerry (Stephen’s Dad), Peggy (Stephen’s Mom), and Paige. Second Row: Amanda, Parker, Kim (Stephen’s sister), Tatum, Kelby, and me. Third Row: Michael (Stephen’s brother), Greg (Kim’s husband), and Stephen.

Hannah, our oldest niece, and myself on Thanksgiving Day…I started babysitting Hannah when she was about 4 years old. She’s 17 now. I’m old.

Hannah, me, and Hallie, our 13 year old niece. Hallie was 1 when I started babysitting her…seriously, I’m old.

Paige and her Uncle Greg…Paige normally doesn’t have much to do with Uncle Greg. It’s not that she doesn’t like him, but she’s very partial to her Grandma when we’re around Stephen’s family. We had to document her progress with Uncle Greg!

I loved Paige’s Thanksgiving Day outfit this year! I ordered it on etsy.com and it’s personalized with her monogram. LOVE!

Now that Thanksgiving is over, we’ve moved onto Christmas and our house is decorated and ready! We got the tree out on Thanksgiving night and I was glad to have help from Stephen and Paige…

Paige was helping me put ornaments on the tree…