We had half of the Heffernans including Oma, Opa and Demi and Cahills at our house in Los Altos for Thanksgiving this year! We were challenged to cook a 40+ pound turkey raised by the Matthews in Chico and freshly butchered on Sunday. We had a three day event getting the bird ready, pre-eating and then BBQ'ing all day Thursday starting the fire by 9am (wouldn't even come close to fitting in the oven) It was a great Thanksgiving with lots of kids, lots of food and lots of fun -especially to host for the first time at our house!

My 18 pound baby and our 40+ pound bird

Thanks to these kids - Ellie, Kate and Patrick (with Maggie and Aly) for raising this turkey for us all!

I will spare the process of how the turkey got to this point from walking on two legs - but those are some big mean birds! Thanks to Doug, Maureen, Joe and Bill for doing the dirty work. Getting de-feathered... looks like a process!

And thanks to Bill and Anne for bringing the bird to our house and brinning it for 2 days - here it is coming out of the brine to go on the spit

makes the cutting board look tiny!

3 man process

It took two engineers and one lawyer to rig up this contraption complete with a deflector to cook the turkey for 7 hours

yummmmy!

view from above - there was lots of "watching the turkey" (aka drinking beer, playing Scrabble and watching kids on the rope swing)

Heff and Baby Caroline

Bill making sure no one is cheating in Scrabble

Anne reading books to Aly and Caroline

Sweet Caroline looks more like her sister Clara everyday

Dad and JJ taking a break

Maisie-Moo and her best buddie "Care-la"

On a nature hunt for table decorations

scavengers

These girls were big helpers

Aly is pretty excited to try the bow and arrow at the Nature Preserve

Little climbers

So serious about the shot

Francie and Ariel getting a ride from Maggie - the girls LOVED following Maggie's every move this week and I loved how well Maggie taught them to clean their room and the playroom after the usual playtime tornado hit!

Love this shot of Maggie on her first attempt. and she hit the target!

patient "Uncle Bi-nan"

Francie's new favorite silly faces

JJ girl in a cupcake hat hand-me-down

big kids

big kids being crazy

thanksgiving table with the leaves and things from our walk

Cousin Kate joined us and all the chaos! she still loves us despite burning her mouth on wakefields, the girls making her paint every little finger and toenail over and over, lots of talk of changing diapers and one barfing kid (Clara was sick all day!) to round out her Thanksgiving