Thanksgiving is here again and that can only mean one thing… the Annual CaresTeam Thanksgiving dinner. This has been a tradition the last three years Keri and I have been on the property. The first year we battled through a new manager and bronchitis to host and feed 75 people in our clubhouse. Last year, we opted to partner with Megan and Damien across the street and make dinner for both of our apartment complexes. We promoted the dinner heavily and moved to the bigger clubhouse across the street and, in turn, had over 325 residents attend. With all the success of last year, this year had to be bigger and better.Keri and I began November by preparing for this year’s dinner. Then Marilee passed away, and I had to remove myself from the preparations and fly to Chicago. Thank goodness, Keri is as amazing as she is. She really took over and by shopping time had garnered over $80 in donations and taken care of the invitations and flyers. The week before the dinner was full of planning, list making, comparison shopping and planning of how to cook 16 turkeys in 6 ovens. Friday night began with the greatest shopping adventure ever. We had shopping to do at Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club, Fry’s, Basha’s, Albertson’s and Safeway and an empty minivan. One of the hardest things to deal with when trying to purchase mass quantities of food for the holidays are the limits put in place by grocery stores. 1 turkey? 4 pies? 2 boxes of stuffing? Not the best when your shopping list includes 16 turkeys, 4 hams, 36 boxes of stuffing, 5 gallons of green beans, 25 lbs of potato flakes, 688 rolls, and 40 pies. But that’s where strategy comes into play. 4 hours later, we had filled the minivan and were ready to begin the baking process the next day. Saturday was baking and setup day. We started around 1pm and finished at 11 pm. We started by thawing the turkey…. baked 40 pies and 700 rolls. Finally, Saturday was over, and we all were able to retreat to our respective beds. After church on Sunday, the real prep work began. Part of the stress of cooking for so many people is the logistics of how do you actually prepare that much food. This is where the schedule comes in. Turkeys were paired up based about their weight and scheduled to enter each oven and various times so that ever 30 minutes two more hot turkeys would be pulled from the oven for carving. The schedule was the law. After the schedule had been completed, each turkey had to be prepped for cooking which means that 16 bags had be be buttered completely. I use my mom’s brown paper bag turkey recipe because of how easy it is and how juicy the turkey is. I swear its the best. Keri helped with the turkey prepping and as always we had a lil fun.We had ham, green bean casserole, corn, cranberry relish, stuffing and mashed potatoes, pie and TONS of Cool Whip!! Not mention, great helpers and the Favre and the Packers on the bigscreen!! In the end, all the hardwork was TOTALLY worth it. We fed over 425 residents and were able to give 8 families a complete Thanksgiving dinner for Thanksgiving day. So many of our residents were thrilled to have a chance to have a real Thanksgiving dinner with their neighbors. Over twenty of our awesome friends came and volunteered and helped us out. Even cleanup, wasn’t so bad…. don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t fun but we were completely finished with everything by midnight.