A Very Grateful Thanksgiving

This year we didn't have any family around to either go and visit or to visit us (which made it so I didn't have any desire to do my annual Black Friday Shopping trip, but I digress!) but we had the opportunity to have Sean's boss and his wife come over to our home for a combined effort Thanksgiving dinner. It turned out wonderful! It is a tradition in the Erickson family to have Granny's rolls at Thanksgiving dinner. Every year, my mom would re-create Granny's rolls and now the responsibility has been taken over by my younger sister, Jennie (who makes a mean roll!). Since we haven't been able to make it back to Utah to my parents house the past two years, I have tried to carry on the tradition with some pretty tragic results. Last year, it was my first time cooking with a gas stove and I had no idea the damage a stove like that could do to rising dough. Because I was running short on time, I thought I could speed up the rising process by setting the dough on the back burner while the stove was on and cooking the turkey. Instead of the dough rising, it got cooked! I didn't realize that there was a vent right there by the burner that allowed the heat from the oven to vent. Duh! We had a massive cooked ball of dough that was not able to be made into rolls. It was very interesting to look at but I was mortified that I had ruined the rolls! My poor niece, Hilary, who was visiting us, had never seen something like that before in her life! This year, since we had Sean's boss and his wife here, I was praying that the rolls would turn out and we wouldn't have a catastrophe like last year on our hands. I am proud to say that the rolls turned out beautiful and they tasted fantastic! Sean's boss was so impressed, he took a picture with his camera phone so he could remember them! (Actually, he took the picture so he could send it to me for the blog.) Here they are! We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. We are so grateful for all that we have been blessed with this year and look forward to the next year!