Thanksbegiving

This year we had the lucky treat of hosting Nick’s parents for the Thanksgiving holiday.  They were recently released from their 3 year service in the Accra, Ghana temple presidency. 

I am going to go ahead and start with the blog bragging.   Get ready.  This year I made cranberry sauce from scratch for the very first time in my 29 years of life.  I was amazed at how simple it is to make, and then was left wondering why in the world they sell it in a can!  (Though I do love a good ribbed cranberry mold)  I mean, if it were hard to make I could see it, but ah well.  So I found the recipe in this cool vintage Thanksgiving children’s book that was sitting out at the public library.  You can see that it is mouse approved, and that’s important.

The biggest challenge in making the meal was keeping the kids entertained and keeping their chubby little hands off all the stuff on the counter.  First I thought, ‘ah, just let them help’: It was about as helpful as I imagine a bunch of cats helping would be. 

I tried to distract them with food like my parents did with me back in the day:

Isn’t that a handsome cutting board?  My dad made it all by himself.  This was also the first time that I’ve ever seen Nick get excited about buying cheese.  Yes, Nick bought fancy cheese.  The kids were unimpressed with the fancy cheese.

So, I then gave them some of the cookies we had made the night before and the frosting container.  ‘Here, leave me be,’ I said, as I set the whole thing on the table. 

This worked for ten minutes.

In a desperate move I finally locked them outside.  They loved it:

Well, unlike the kids, at least the leaves I strung up around the door looked happy.

Then Nick got home from work and immediately got to work being helpful in the kitchen:

Oh wait, here he is being helpful:

While I wondered around our yard and jarbled this together for the table:

So, I’ll admit it, we put the kids down for a nap and we ate without them.  Perhaps I shouldn’t record that for posterity or the public, but as a result we had a lovely and relaxing meal where I actually got to chew my food.  Later, when presented with their own traditional thanksgiving food feast, they asked for coco puffs, so I just didn’t feel bad.

We had great fun with Grandma and Grandpa.  Rosalyn especially liked to boss Grandma around, making sure she knew where we were going and what we were doing next and all that. 

Here we are making the aforementioned sugar cookies with Grandma.

The boys enjoyed holding Grandpa’s hand instead of mom’s whenever we crossed a road, and all of them kept Grandpa with a steady supply of books to read while he was here:

Oh, and I like this picture of the Grandmas on Skype.

The end.  Happy Thanksgiving.