Thanksgiving 2024

We went to Thanksgiving dinner at Grandpa and Darla's house this year, and what a treat that was! We've been in charge of Thanksgiving dinner for many, many years in a row so not being in charge was quite a relief. Of course, Andrew kept busy in the kitchen experimenting with bread and pie (our two major assignments) and Miriam made a big ol' vat of cranberry sauce. But that's all we had to do. 

Dishes were a lot more manageable. And our leftover status is on point.

GG came for dinner as well. We ended up with ham, zucchini stuffing boats, frog eye salad, potatoes...and some other things I'm probably forgetting. It was a delicious feast and the company was wonderful. 

We ate dinner soon after arriving, though first Phoebe had to chase big Titus around to show him little Titus. He kept running from her and then every time he'd decided to give in and greet her she'd scream and run away. But eventually they managed to stand side-by-side.

Alexander is 7!

Today is Alexander's birthday. 

It's also Canadian Thanksgiving. 

And Indigenous People's Day in the United States.

Sometimes I feel bad for celebrating Thanksgiving on what was Columbus Day in the States (since both Canadian Thanksgiving and that holiday land on the second Monday in October) because that might look like I'm celebrating Columbus Day (which I'm not), which losing its footing to the counter-celebration of Indigenous People's Day (with good reason). 

Though Canadian Thanksgiving has a separate history from American Thanksgiving it's truly no less colonial in nature. And the selection of the second Monday in October—though claimed to be because it's often the last nice weekend of the season—is suspect. Canadian holidays often align with American holidays even if we're completely unaware of it.

Ever heard of Family Day? It's a holiday that celebrates families—you get a day off of school and work and there are discounts at family friendly venues and it's great fun! It's the third Monday in February...which just happens to be when they're celebrating Presidents' Day south of the 49th. 

Coincidence? 

I think not. I really think it's simply convenient for Canadian institutions to have these kinds of "bank holidays" on the same schedule that the American Superpowers have their bank holidays.

But that's just my theory. 

Anyway, we had Thanksgiving dinner for Alexander's birthday dinner and Andrew went all out because we aren't hosting Thanksgiving this year (for the first time in a long time)! 

Here's our little harvest of garden carrots that we had with our meal:

Wave your little hand and whisper, "So long, dearie!"

This morning Grandpa picked up our "youth" (Rachel and Miriam easily qualify in this category, but Benjamin will be joining the young men in January, so he's close enough) to go clean the church. Ordinarily we all go but, uh, when our team leader put forth 7:00 am as a non-negotiable start time, I blanched a little. 

I'm tired, okay? 

Phoebe has slept "through" the night perhaps five times in her life. Phoebe doesn't nap anymore (not typically). Once Phoebe gets up, my day lasts until she goes to bed (and then I have to stay up and take care of other things). 

Waking her (and the rest of the kids) up at 6:00 (or so) in the morning so that we could get all the kids fed and dressed and out the door sounded like a terrible idea. 

And Andrew's been burning the candle at both ends to play Thanksgiving host and attempt to keep up with his work projects, so he's beyond tired...and...

Anyway, we just didn't go. We may have gone if a compromise on the time could have been found. But we sent our kids to represent, so that's got to count for something, right?

*****

In the mid-morning, Grandpa showed up with Emily and Katherine so that we could all say our goodbyes before he (and Zoë and Alexander) took them to the airport. 

Here is everybody except for me:

Happy Thanksgiving

It was wonderful to have a full house for Thanksgiving. We stayed up late baking pies and prepping food for dinner, then had our plan of sleeping in interrupted by Phoebe. Benjamin and I ran a 5k, we played some group games together (like Poetry for Neanderthals and Really Loud Librarians) so that everyone could play at once. It's actually a little difficult to find games suitable for 10 players. 

Our neighbours are giving away a little clubhouse that has been sitting unused in their backyard for the past 20+ years. They offered it to Benjamin, who was pretty excited about the idea. His real dream is to build himself a tiny house so he can have his own personal space, but he and his friend Reed recently decided they'd build a shed in the backyard. They searched on Amazon and figured they could order a shed for around $40. 

"You can't buy a shed for $40," I told them.

I was accused of hating adventure and killing dreams. 

On the contrary, I support their dreams. They're simply not plausible because there is no such thing as a $40 shed. They need to come up with a better plan. 

"Show me this $40 shed," I challenged Benjamin.

"Well, they can be like $40 on average," he told me.

We went searching on Amazon together. We found this:

A $20 shed...floor mat. Not a shed. A floor mat.

Matchy, matchy (and some music)

I picked up some Christmas pyjamas from my "buy nothing group"; someone wanted to give away a pair of elf pyjamas—size 8 and size 3. That was just about perfect for our house. The pyjamas are a little small for Alexander, but they worked perfectly well for him and he was ecstatic to be matching with Zoë (especially because we'd recently babysat my friend's twins).

Here are the cute little elf twins:

Thanksgiving day

Thanksgiving! We had it! Don't worry! We had it!

I'm just slow about writing about it because...thesis. But that's okay! 

We'd planned to have dinner around 3:00 in the afternoon. Josie, Rachel, and Miriam played games at Grandpa's house all morning and cooked the turkey breasts (which no one ate very much of, though the kids seemed to love after I turned it into turkey à la king last week for one of our leftover nights). The little kids and I spent the morning raking leaves. Andrew spent the morning bustling about the kitchen.

Here's how our spread ended up:

Auntie Josie is here!

My sister Josie arrived yesterday afternoon. 

I had a meeting at 1:00, so Andrew to Zoë to go pick her up from the metro station (we'll drive her to the airport when she leaves since she has to be there so early in the day), which I should probably get used to calling MARTA at some point since no one knows what I'm talking about when I say "metro" here. Or they do. They just always give me a "huh" face before correcting me with MARTA. 

Zoë was so excited to be selected as a companion for this trip that she got dressed and did her hair without any complaining at all. And then she proceeded to ask whether or not it was time to go every five minutes for the next four hours. We eventually set a timer on our Alexa device so that Zoë could ask her how long until it was time to leave to pick up Auntie Josie and that worked well. 

When the pulled back up at home, I had finished my meeting and was just putting Phoebe down for a nap, so the rest of us visited quietly with Josie while she slept. One of the first things she noticed, of course, was how much the children had grown. The children noticed, too! All of a sudden Auntie Josie is a lot smaller than she used to seem!

Rachel is the only one taller than her...so far. Josie is pretty used to being the shortest one in the family, though. She's been shorter than all of her siblings for her whole life and is shorter than many of her nieces and nephews already (to that point, so am I, even though I'm the second-tallest sister)!

This week

We started this week with a quiet Canadian Thanksgiving dinner, made 100% by Rachel (except, I suppose, for the potatoes, which were left over from Sunday's dinner). We didn't get around to our traditional Thanksgiving FHE lesson because Miriam had a different lesson prepared already (since she taught YW/Sunday School on Sunday and in this house we recycle), but we did have an "underwear talk" focusing on giving thanks and we'll start our Thankful Tree soon...after Alexander's birthday.

Here's a picture of our Thanksgiving dinner:

What Phoebe's Thankful For

I wanted to acknowledge Thanksgiving really quick (I'll do a more formal Thanksgiving post later) by sharing some pictures of Phoebe dressed up as a pumpkin. She's wearing the hat and booties I crocheted for Miriam (and I actually still have the nightgown Miriam is wearing in her pictures as well, so I should redo the pictures with Phoebe wearing that as well). 

Rachel and I took these on November 17th, I believe. We had been taking pictures using the actual camera but just as I got Phoebe into this outfit the camera battery died so these are from my cell phone camera.

Welcome Fall!

We held our autumnal "opening ceremonies" last Monday—on Canadian Thanksgiving—as we usually do. Sometimes we do a fuller Thanksgiving, but other times life seems too hectic for that (like when Daddy has to work and Mommy's diet is so limited) so we did a simple fall meal instead. We had pumpkin soup with some Thanksgiving sides. Now that I think about it, we have instant stuffing in the basement that we probably should have used. Oh, well.

I was in charge of the soup and put Miriam in charge of the cranberry sauce. She decided the recipe on the bag was ridiculous because our family really enjoys cranberry sauce. Surely the yield wasn't enough for our appetites! I did manage to convince her to follow the recipe in the end, which was probably a good thing because the recipe yielded plenty. 

"I think you'll be surprised by how much three cups of berries really is," I warned her. "How many berries are in a package?"

"I don't know..." she said. 

"Ummm...it says 25!" Alexander informed us.

And, indeed, the bag did say 25, though there were a lot more berries in there than 25! 

Christmas Light Looking

We did a couple of big things today—we plucked all the leaves from our Thankful Tree so that we could make room for the incoming Christmas cards and we turned Alexander's car seat around. It was time. He's three years old (and then some). Besides, for Family Night Andrew suggested that we go out Christmas Light Looking, which everyone agreed Alexander would enjoy much more facing the right way 'round. 

The hospital had a lovely light display that you can drive through, but they're really not as interesting from the back. So we turned Alexander around and he was fascinated. The drive alone was enough for him—he kept saying, "Wow! Wow! WOW!" but when we got to the lights he was over the moon, so I suppose switching his carseat around was worth it...even if it's further evidence that he's growing up. 

Everyone enjoyed the lights, though they were all rather confused when we announced we were leaving the house. Alexander was the most confused/excited child of all. He barged into the bathroom to ask me if I was going on the family trip, too. 

"I am."

"Good!" he said, running over to give my legs a hug. "Because I want you to be in our family and go on our family trip! We have never ever gone on a family trip before! So I will make a map!"

I hope this family "trip" was exciting enough that he'll want to go on an actual trip sometime. 

Gratitude post 7

Last night my family got together for a game night the only way we could—virtually!

Patrick dialed in from Hawaii (4:00 his time). 

David and Abra dialed in from British Columbia—Prince George and Langley, respectively (6:00 their time).

My parents, Josie, and Kelli dialed in from Provo and Layton, Utah (7:00 their time). 

I, of course, joined in from Georgia (9:00 our time). 

I believe this occasion marks the first time we have all managed to be on a call simultaneously. I also think it's the first time we have ever played a game together as one, complete family unit. There simply haven't been many instances when we've all lived—or have even been—under the same roof. I think the last time we were all together was either my Grandma and Grandpa Layton's 50th wedding anniversary (US, 2001) or my Grandma Conrad's funeral (Canada, 2003). 

I know for sure that we were all together in 2001 (is that the last time Abra was able to make a trip down to the states?) but can't quite remember if Kelli went up to Canada for Grandma Conrad's funeral in 2003.

Okay, I looked it up the only way I could think of—by pulling out pictures of the event and, as it turns out, Kelli did manage to make the trip. So here we are in April of 2003:

Gratitude post 6

I don't think I ever really blogged about Canadian Thanksgiving, which was way back on October 12. Our Thankful tree was busy with birthday balloons for much of October. We did manage to get a few leaves up there but we weren't as diligent about it as we had been in past years. It's hard to keep up with everything when every day feels exactly like the one before it.

Andrew cooked a beautiful Canadian Thanksgiving meal for us, though we always take a few more "shortcuts" for Canadian Thanksgiving than we do with American Thanksgiving, such as the canned green beans. We just have more time to devote to things like cooking a big meal on American Thanksgiving than we do on Canadian Thanksgiving (though to be fair that is usually also a day off). So here's our Canadian meal:

Gratitude post 3

Today I'm thankful for language. 

I'm thankful for the sweet baby language I've witnessed while my kids (and nieces and nephews and younger brother and sister) have grown. Language development is fascinating...and adorable. Case in point: The other day Alexander was wearing his cute penguin pyjamas which—ridiculously—have igloos on them as well. My kids have been learning a bit about the antarctic and there was a little confusion about where certain animals lived—polar bears and penguins and such; in short, they don't live together...and penguins don't belong with igloos.

These pyjamas have penguins and igloos on them in spite of that improbability, so Andrew pointed to an igloo and asked Alexander, "What's this?"

"A...doo-dit!" Alexander announced happily. 

"A what?" Andrew asked.

"A doo-dit," Alexander repeated.

"What's a doo-dit?" Andrew asked.

"Lite, when you want to tick two paper togetter. You u'e a doo-dit!"

"A glue stick?!" I asked. "When you want to stick two papers together you use a glue stick?"

"Yeah!" Alexander exclaimed. "Lite, dat's one doo-dit, but pennins live in a doo-dit, too!"

"Close," I said. "Penguins live in igloos."

It's just so fun to watch children decode language, whether it's their first or second language. 

Today I got to have a little video call with my mom and brother (and was so thankful we could use our common language to speak with each other). Alexander did a lot of the talking on this video call and my mom was impressed at how well David managed to decode Alexander's baby speech—in two different languages! When Alexander realized Aunt Ruth was speaking Spanish (to her family on a different video call in the background), he quickly announced that he could "tout in Bannih! Uno, doe, fway, twatwoh, finto, fay, fiete, nuebe, diay!" 

Uncle David realized what he was doing right away—he was touting in Bannih (counting in Spanish)! He missed ocho, but that's alright. His counting is rubbish in English as well. But we are doing our best to figure out a few things in Spanish (and German and Russian and Arabic and...so forth). I'm grateful for the multitude of languages in the world and am grateful for the little bit I've been able to learn in the small number of languages I've attempted to learn. I'm thankful for people more fluent than me who translate things for others. 

I'm thankful for written language, how sounds and ideas can be represented on the page (or the screen) and be distributed or kept private. I'm thankful for books and literature, for people who use language beautifully—poets and authors and screenwriters and playwrights.

I'm thankful for the change to study literature and language more (and am rather thankful to have just finished the first draft of my first final paper).

Gratitude post 2

When I was younger I couldn't ever understand why my mom didn't animals in the house. She was raised on a farm and while they occasionally had kittens (or calves) inside the house, the animals, for all intents and purposes, lived outside. Now that I'm older...I kind of get it. It would be nice to not have to worry about the way the cat kicks litter out of her litter box (though we're using pine pellets, which has been great so far (she still gets wood chips everywhere)), or the way she likes to sharpen her claws on my favourite couch (though I think I may have finally won that battle), or how loud she can be when she gets hyper and scampers around the house, or how obnoxious she is when she's in heat.

She's just ending her second heat cycle, which I'm grateful will be her last! As educational as having a...ahem...mature...cat...has been, I'm pleased to announce that she'll be off for a little operation in the morning. 

We assembled some hygiene kits this afternoon and had a few washcloths leftover. Waffelles discovered this pile, snuggled right in and fell fast asleep (Benjamin tucked her in) while the rest of us worked on some new Shrinky-Dink projects (it's our newest obsession, apparently). We stuck one of the cloths into her cat carrier so that she can snuggle with it while she's riding in the car.

Gratitude post 1

Today I am grateful for challenges that have helped me mourn with those that mourn, and for the life experience of others that have helped them to mourn with me when I needed it. 

A dear friend of mine is in the hospital right now, doing all she can to stay pregnant for as long as she can. I'm so worried for her, but am so glad that she's at a good hospital (where she'll stay until the baby is born). I was grateful for the opportunity to reflect on all the help we got when Benjamin was born, most especially from the women who'd walked that difficult path before me (so don't be surprised, Crystal, if your blog stats show an increase in traffic from Kansas because I sent this sweet friend your posts about Cheetah). It's going to be a long, hard road for her sweet family, but they're amazing and will get through it just fine. 

A cousin of mine has been dealing with an aggressive form of breast cancer and a few days ago her teenage daughter took over posting on her support group. Her mom had begun saying and doing strange things, so she'd taken her to the ER, where they had to wait and wait and wait and wait and wait...because there were no beds available...because all the beds were taken with COVID patients. But finally they made room at the inn, told this sweet child that her mom was suffering from "delirium," and sent her home to rest while keeping her mother for "observation." 

I had a feeling I knew the reason for her delirium—irreversible organ failure. 

Today this young girl offered this pithy update: "My mom might not make it. That's all. Thank you."

Then a few hours later: "My mom has passed away. Thank you once again."

And I was taken back to Andrew's equally concise—yet emotionally saturated—post from two years ago: "She's gone." And I thought of all the wonderful people who sat with us, cried with us, remembered with us, and welcomed us into the messy world of grieving. There's not much I can do for this sweet, now-motherless girl. She lives so far away and I don't even really know her that well, but I wrote some words of condolence to her and hope they do something for her heart. 

I often wonder if anything I do has any sort of impact on anything (or anyone) for the better. So much of...everything...seems rather inconsequential. 

This past week I lead another (zoom) activity for my primary girls. We did a gratitude scavenger hunt where the girls went around their houses looking for things they were thankful for in each colour of the rainbow. Then we told each other what we'd found to be thankful for. One girl surprised me by producing a yellow paper heart—a note that I'd written to her this summer. I was so touched that it had actually meant something to her, even though at the time it had felt like a rather trivial thing to do. Then again, it probably felt inconsequential to her to say that she appreciated the note. 

So I guess what I'm grateful for are the moments that make us reach out to others—the moments that force us to admit that we need help, the moments that allow us to open up and share our lived experiences, the moments that allow us to reflect on the earthly angels that have influenced our lives. 

But I'm also feeling that life is so hard for so many, and I really wish it didn't have to be this hard.

Our Thankful Tree 2019

While I was busy taking care of leaves all over the outside of our house, I decided I may as well de-leaf our Thankful Tree as well. Besides, we just got our first batch of Christmas cards and I needed somewhere to display all the wonderful people we know, so now our Thankful Tree is a Christmas Card Tree. It's beautiful!

We weren't very dedicated about writing on leaves this year, but we managed to get a good number on the tree. We'll do better next year, surely, when things aren't feeling so new and frenetic. Is cross-country culture shock a thing? If it's not, I suppose uprooting is stressful anyway—getting to know a new place and new people is difficult even without having to learn a new language or convert currency in your mind all the time.

Here's our tree in full foliage:

Fa-la-la-la-la

I was about brought to tears by another children's book this evening. This time it was The Lighthouse Santa by Sara Hoagland Hunter and I started choking back tears while reading the author's note at the very beginning of the story (of all ridiculous places to start crying).

It's a true story based on an experience of a man—Edward Rowe Snow—who flew around delivering Christmas surprises to lighthouse keepers and their families (who lived very secluded lives) for forty years. And that's just so nice (cue tears).

The rest of the story was rather easy to read (and I didn't actually end up crying). Benjamin announced that it was a very "calming" story. And it truly was. Simply beautiful.

Zoë keeps asking whether Santa is real. I keep telling her that he's alive in our culture, an answer she finds rather unsatisfying, but which is also true.

When she saw an illustration of Edward Rowe Snow dressed up in a Santa suit she pointed and said, "There, see!? Santa is real." And I thought to myself, "She's not wrong."

In this story Mr. Snow was very much the embodiment of Santa.

Now that Thanksgiving is over with (we ended up going to a friend's house for dinner; they posted they were eating alone and we were eating alone and we just figured if we ate alone together we'd be that much less alone, so even though it was a last-minute coordination it ended up being a lot of fun) we're officially ready to get this Christmas holiday season underway.

I've been sneaking in Christmas stories for quite some time now (of course), but Andrew is still pretty strictly a no-Christmas-until-after-Thanksgiving kind of guy. He's softened up a little over the past decade (and a half?!) that we've been married. In fact we might now be to the point that he's stopped caring about it altogether but the rest of us have gotten so used to him not liking Christmas creep that he pretends to be annoyed just to validate our Christmas pining.

For example, he was out of town all week last week (so we were listening to Christmas music with reckless abandon over here) and on Saturday when we were out for a sunset stroll, the kids hatched a plan to put Christmas lights up on the house before he came home (that very evening). Since it was already getting dark, putting up all our Christmas lights was out of the question but we did wrap some around one of our trees in the front:

Thankful tree 2019

So, I did it! I painted a tree on my wall and it went just fine. It's not quite symmetrical, which is fine because I meant for it to be asymmetrical but I'm afraid it's not quite asymmetrical enough, but that's okay. Sometimes when I make an attempt at representing something found in nature—be it a flower, a cloud, a sunset, or whatever—I always think that I didn't do a very good job, that it doesn't actually look like that. But on the other hand, sometimes I look at nature and think to myself, "See? Clouds can look like that! And would you look at this really weird twig!" and I know that pretty much anything I could draw or imagine probably already exists in nature (because nature's just that crazy). There's a high probability that a tree that's ever-so-slightly asymmetrical as this one exists somewhere in the world today (and that's good enough for me):

We've been slow about putting leaves on this year. It's been an exhausting semester. But we're slowly filling it up with things we're thankful for. and it's fun to have it be so big and bold on our wall!

Happy Thanksgiving, part 1

Between orchestra, a quick stop at the playground, and general unruliness, we only got about half a day's schoolwork in (which is fine because I am considered the "superintendent, principal, teacher" of my school, according to Georgia law, and can declare that Saturday's field trip also counted as a half day of school (even though the trip was much longer than a full day of school...I'm not sure we were learning that whole time) so between Saturday and today we're right on track), not that we couldn't have just taken a break since technically it should have been our fall break. 

See? Fall.