Our honorary Canadian Thanksgiving 2011

Yesterday, Sunday the 9th of October, was the day we chose to have a Thanksgiving dinner in Sterling, Alaska in honor of the Canadian Thanksgiving that is occurring today (Monday).  Our granddaughter Brandi Mullen is visiting us for a week and will not be home with her parents and siblings to enjoy it this year so we decided to have one for her here with family. 

2007 Everett with pheasant taken with Tom Hoffman

We started by defrosting 3 of the turkeys that we brought home from Canaseraga during past hunting seasons when we were there visiting family and great friends. Everett has developed quite a group of hunters that share their time, land and hunting techniques for deer, turkeys and pheasants. he has had a great time sharing during the years since his first trip to New York in 2005. Here is one of the pheasants...


He got a really great whitetail deer in Arkport while we were staying at my sister and her husband's (Dorothy and Mark Coddington) house. He had been hunting all day and spent a lot of time out tracking, in tree stands and was in the house when Mark yelled at him...."Everett, there is a deer right out there!" It turned out to be a nice big buck and Everett used the BBQ grill outside the garage door to rest the rifle on and made the shot across the field and pasture to where the deer was under the apple tree. He was definitely sold on hunting deer there after that!


Some of those trips resulted in turkeys donated by Tom Hoffman...That is what we thawed and stuffed and roasted for our dinner. We had two whole and one that was deboned. We added some ham, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, pickles, olives, green bean casserole, pumpkin pie, fruit dessert and an apple pie that Brandi made. Brandi, Megan and Dylan all got in to creating...

Brandi cutting up the apples to make her pie    

Dylan helped by getting the cranberry jell out and sliced in the bowls and the green and black olives and pickles...
Megan spent quite a while peeling about 8 pounds of potatoes...Megan, Brandi and Dylan all took turns mashing and whipping the potatoes........

All in all it was a very nice experience and I think everyone enjoyed getting together to share a nice meal in honor of Canada's Thanksgiving.  It is so nice to family together.