Happy Thanksgiving!!

I was pretty bent on making Thanksgiving dinner here in Nicaragua, even if I couldn’t find any ingredients. Well, turns out, I was very pleasantly surprised! The first time we went to the grocery store, I kid you not, they had turkeys in the refrigerated section. It was amazing. Then a few days after that, there was an entire end cap with Thanksgivingy stuff-like gravy, pumpkin, stuffing, etc. It must be for Christmas around here, because last I checked Nicaraguans don’t celebrate Thanksgiving!

I thought I would be doing this all on my own, and I hadn’t really thought that through. But turns out, I was not alone, and had a super fun she-also-loves-Thanksgiving-and-all-the cheesy-stuff that goes along with it friend. Her name is Brittany, and she came this week to visit Stu. She is from Colorado, where a dear friend of mine lives, so of course I instantly liked her. We had so much fun making Thanksgiving together!

Our theme this year, beat this Martha Stewart: “We’ll make it work”. So even though the grocery store had way more than we could have ever imagined, each dish that we were going to prepare was shy an ingredient or two. Sometimes it was an important one, others not as much. So we used substitutions, made stuff up, emails friends, and got it done. Every time we came across a hurdle, we would ask the other if we could use X instead of Y, etc. And we’d always end up saying-we’ll make it work. And, much to our surprise and delight, we did! It was fantastic food!

We had turkey-that we brined, something I tried four years ago with our old small group at church and it turned out great so it’s my go to, super easy and amazingly moist recipe! We made dishes from both Brandon’s side of the family and mine. It was almost-almost I say- like eating with everyone knowing we were all eating some of the exact same things! We made Stone family spicy corn-mom, I actually found the chipotle peppers in adobo sauce!!! We made my mom’s classic amazing mashed potatoes, my sister’s zucchini casserole. It was so fun.

And of course, at the end, we all sat around and shared what we were thankful for. So cheesy, but something I just love doing. Our lists were long, as we enter this new season of life. God has shown us how to be thankful in everything, something that isn’t always easy to do. But right now, it’s hard not to be thankful. We have a true miracle baby girl on the way, we found a lovely home in two days flat, have met great new friends and staff here in Nicaragua that have been so welcoming and friendly, and we are together once again, living in the same country, same town, same house…as husband and wife should!

Here are some fun shots from the day. Sure hope your Thanksgiving was wonderful, spent with family and friend eating yummy food!!