The best company. The best cheese board. The best weather. The best Thanksgiving.
This year, we couldn’t have asked for a better Thanksgiving. We were so grateful to have each other here in our home to celebrate. Oh boy did we celebrate. Starting with one of the best cheese boards we have ever made.
If your asking yourself if we watched YouTube videos for ideas on how to assemble a cheese board, then the answer is yes—and it paid off. It was a wonderful spread, and more importantly, a tasty one, too.
It was so amazing to finally host a Thanksgiving in our newly renovated kitchen, which we didn’t have in time last year.
The day leading up to the big meal was so much fun. Having the kids running around and my brother and his girlfriend Ariana there was the best. We ate our cheese tray brunch and watched football. Our yearly tradition.
And the weather was so lovely so we hung around outside in the patio and played a few riveting rounds of corn hole.
We ate around 5pm which was perfect timing, and of course had to get the annual photo of Brett cutting the turkey.
However, can you believe I have zero photos of any of the delicious foods we ate other then the cheese tray? Which I guess goes to show, how amazing everything was that we could not pause to snap photos before diving in. All I can say was it was amazing and filled with all the traditional favorites like homemade cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes to die for, green beans with toasted almonds, stuffing and gravy made from the turkey drippings. So good! So full!
I hope you all had a very Happy Thanksgiving! From our family to yours!
Friday
Friday was actually very low key. We all slept in, except the kids who were outside playing pretty much all day. Then we headed to Cinépolis, a dine-in movie theater nearby. It was our one outing for the day before coming home to watch the UCF vs. USF game, which is always a nail-biter. We saw the new Ghostbusters movie, which we would not recommend. But the food was good and it was still fun. 😉
The only photo that I snapped was this gem:
Saturday
Saturday morning started with the kids and Brett putting up the Christmas tree.
It was supposed to be our ResortPass day at a local hotel. But the weather was too cool for us to swim, which I was fine with because we don’t get many chilly days here. We knew we wanted to be outside to enjoy it, so we went to Lakeridge Winery in Clermont instead. It was so nice to sit outside near the vineyard and listen to live music.
We enjoyed lunch from the food court, al fresco, and toured the winery while enjoying the free wine tasting. I was pleasantly surprised with the wine selection. I assumed that Florida grapes were so much sweeter than other regions and didn’t think I would like any of the wines. But they were all really tasty. Even a few of the sweeter ones were really good!
I would definitely go back there! My dad even brought home some of their Chardonnay which was one of our favorites.
And to top off the evening, we had purchased a few wines from Wine.com to sample and have our own wine tasting at home. It was fun to read the descriptions and taste them together, and decide which one was our favorite.
We all agreed that the MacRostie Chardonnay was the clear winner.
Sunday
We had to say farewell to Will and Ariana on Sunday. So we decided to do so at the amazing Santiago’s Bodega brunch. We had never been before but I heard a lot about it, and it did not disappoint.
The service was amazing and whatever we wanted, our server was great at selecting the quantities for all of us to enjoy. There was peel and eat shrimp, prime rib, pasta carbonara, biscuits and gravy and the desserts were so unique and delicious. Again, wish I would have taken pictures of the food, but honestly—when my kids are eating as well as they did, then you can guess we’re happy parents and enjoying the moment 100%.
To top of the entire amazing weekend, Sunday was the first night of Hanukkah. We lit the menorahs, missing my brother Will and Ariana (we did their gifts the night before).
This weekend was so full of family and love and it was so nice to go on family adventures with everyone. It was the best weekend and Thanksgiving ever.
