November

November seems like quite some time ago now.  I didn’t finish getting this posted right after Thanksgiving and at this point what’s another couple of days?

These two beautiful autumny Welcome signs came home from school to grace our doors.  Both Kaitlyn and Tristan continue to progress in their German studies.

Nathan helped me to vote in the November elections after we read some books like Duck for President and When I Grow Up I Want to Be President.  We talked about why voting is important and Nathan’s was all the help I needed.

One day we got to pick Lindsay up from school early and we headed to the zoo before picking up the other children.  It was so much fun to just have the two of them, an unlikely pair, to spend time with in this way.

Lindsay performed in The Music Man as a townsperson both singing and dancing during the second weekend in November.  Kaitlyn and I got to go to the Saturday afternoon performance together and see this musical. 

 

Kaitlyn received a “replacement” sweatshirt as a  gift from her Grammy; one that fits and takes the place of the size 2 she’d been insisting on wearing.  Kaitlyn was quite surprised that it fit and happy to still have a similar sweatshirt.

This peanut butter-cheerio loving cat discovered…

Ice Water.  She prefers hers in a glass!!!

We made up so many stories with the little people and their castle.

We spent hours playing and then we’d go right back to the story after an interruption.

I had intended on writing down the reader’s digest version of our stories but at this point it’s been too long.  Some of them were soooooo funny!

I tried a new blueberry poppy seed coffee cake with lemon.  It was quite delicious.

Nathan decided that it was never too cold to go outside for a peachy popsicle.  And Scruffles enjoyed the last of this year’s catnip while Nathan and I blasted off through outer space on our big swing rocket ship in the afternoons.

After receiving a less than stellar mark on his first quarter report card for music class Tristan made sure to fill out and return his practice chart for the Recorder.  Nathan found the second recorder and these two were quite the wakeup crew in the early mornings at our house.  I’m sure the neighbors didn’t realize how glad they should be for window closing season. 

Haley went to her first Homecoming Dance and borrowed my old formal from a dinner dance cruise her Dad and I had back in college on The Spirit of Rochester out on the Lake that May 18 1/2 years ago just before we graduated from college and got married.  Haley wanted something special done with her hair too.  Hair is not my forte but I decided to give it a shot.  I thought about hair all week but still had no idea what I was going to come up with until I was done.  Her hair turned out beautifully.

I think I did a pretty good job.  Haley was pleased as well.

We continued to find notes left on our pillows from a special little someone.  I love little hearts and people and rainbows and letters drawn by young children.  So cute!

Nathan got to help bake when it was his turn to make Family Night treats.  Getting assigned to make treats only happens about once every two months by the time every one gets a turn so he wanted to make SURE we had chocolate chips.  We made a big batch of some really yummy Cowboy Cookies which fit the bill and even had leftovers for a lunchbox treat later in the week.  While we waited for them to bake we got into the puzzles of North American maps.  We named the states as we put them in where they belonged and we worked on who lives in what state.  Washington happened to be the last state to get put in the puzzle.  Somebody important lives there that Nathan sends mail to fairly often these days. 

Scruffles enjoyed the afternoon sun on the cushy chairs out on the deck.

And finally we worked on the great big giant puzzle of the United States.  It seems appropriate as we approached Thanksgiving.  We worked on picking out and naming Ohio, New York and Washington in particular learning and thinking about who lives in those places.  We also named the other states and who or what might be there, as well.  In one of our long loved books by Joan Sweeney called “Me On the Map” we made sure to sing the continent song as well as we pointed to the continents on the map and when we went to the zoo Nathan was able to look at the shape of the continent on the information signs of the different animals and name the continent.  There was a lot of singing through the zoo that day. 

And that is what I remember from November!

Making Wishes

So who hasn’t watched Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and not been impressed with Snoopy and Woodstock pulling on the wishbone at the very end?  It’s very memorable!  And who doesn’t want another way or another chance to make some lofty dream come true?  Kaitlyn and Nathan took this opportunity; a pretty new idea in Nathan’s book… or maybe not so new.  They grabbed hold of the wishbone that we’d saved from our Thanksgiving turkey and were told to think of a wish.

Hmmm!  I’m thinking of a wish!  Thinking… thinking… OK, I’m ready.  Don’t tell!

GO!  And Nathan surprised Kaitlyn by blowing at the bone just like it was a wish on a fuzzy dandelion or a glowing birthday candle!

Thanksgiving Preparations

Our blessings are plentiful and  I love the opportunity to “Give Thanks” on Thanksgiving.  It is a wonderful break after such a busy school season and a blessing for my family to be together enjoying the company of one another as we work together around the house, out in the yard and in the kitchen.  We appropriately  take inventory of our physical blessings when the harvest season is over and look at the abundance of simple beauty present in the world all around us.  I try to make sure that I feel thankful and show gratitude for the plenty that we have been given each and every day of the year, for we truly have been given much and our lives are blessed so much by our Father in Heaven.  He is the one that gives us what we have and the jurisdiction over it all.  Thanksgiving is a nice gesture as it gives us a day to set aside for this purpose of giving thanks.

 

A Thanksgiving meal in our home means preparations take the entire week.  First there is the cleaning and planning and last minute runs to the store.  Then there is the baking.  After kids left for school on Tuesday we turned the kitchen into a bakery using the table for countertop space in our small kitchen.  Vertical space is created with stacking wire racks both in and on the warm oven for raising six dozen rolls.   Nathan gave me a hand early in the week as we began making rolls and roasting vegetables.  Nathan really enjoyed helping to roll out dough and “painting” the dough with butter before it was cut and rolled into crescents.   

The smell of rising dough is heavenly.  The children had the simple joy of being together inside our cozy home after a chilly day of yard work with their dad on Wednesday.

Crescent rolls were made and sweet potatoes at just .17 per pound were roasted and made into two dozen biscuits.  Butternut from the farm was steamed and mashed in with potatoes until it was creamy.  We kept the skins on the potatoes that we purchased at just $1 a bag last month and added a little bit of left over cream cheese and sour cream to give flavor and counteract my skim milk before we added butter, salt and pepper.  Sweet potato casserole was also made, my Mom’s recipe and my favorite, with sweet potatoes we picked up at the farm stand in October.

There were pies.  Originally narrowed to “just” 5 pies I ended up making a 6th pie.  We had a Peach Pie made with home canned peaches and cinnamon, New England Apple Cranberry made with home canned apple slices and fresh cranberries, Pumpkin and Pumpkin Surprise made with fresh roasted pumpkin and Chocolate Chip pie.    There was too much pie.

And finally we had a peanut butter cup pie.  I had one extra turkey and figured he’d look pretty cute atop this pie.  I had no peanuts to add to this but I did have crunchy peanut butter and so I just used that instead of creamy and it turned out great.  While I do subscribe to the idea of not “trying out new recipes” on guests I realize that serving chocolate at Thanksgiving goes against etiquette rules.  However, the two pies with chocolate are the first pies to get finished off every single year I’ve made them.  Admittedly they are a “heavy” dessert to serve after such a large heavy meal.

Yes, we can get at least nine of us around the table which sits in the almost 8x7 foot area at the end of my kitchen but I think next time we have Thanksgiving at home I will add more to the party maybe expanding it out to the living room.  We accomplished this seating arrangement by moving the dishwasher over between the fridge and the back door so that the back door was just half blocked and we could still get out of it if we needed to.  In doing that we also had to move the fridge to the left so that the hallway to the bathroom was just half blocked but we could still walk through that way too.  It worked out really great and we could get in comfortably though we did have to single file in and around the table in order of the seating arrangement.  And the seating arrangement was helped along by Lindsay who kindly sat with the pen, paper, toothpicks and glue gun to finish our turkeys turning them into cute edible place cards.  Nathan even agreed to eat turkey when he saw these guys!  Smiles!!!

Our beautiful table was set with harvest colors, candles and a small clean pumpkin for the centerpiece with our best plate ware, glassware and silver.  There was herb butter turkey with gravy, sausage stuffing, cranberry sauce, cranberry fluff, homemade applesauce, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes with butternut, steamed green beans with garlic, lemon and parsley, sweet potato rolls and crescent rolls all served on the plates or passed around the table.  Our house smelled wonderful and even our kitty cats enjoyed the turkey feast that Rick made for them before they fell into a turkey coma.  As the evening darkened and the candles gave off light we felt thankful to be in our cozy home with our family.

And while generally I like to “pull off” Halloween with 5 kids first before giving much thought to Thanksgiving it has been years since we went on a Thanksgiving adventure to somewhere else… ANYWHERE else.  And so I’m already working on the plans for 2013!  It’s time.   Happy Thanksgiving!