Happy Thanksgiving

I was so excited for Thanksgiving this year--the family together, sharing a real American holiday with our exchange student.  We will no doubt go on and on about how different Christmas is, but Thanksgiving is an American tradition almost 400 years old and such a fun and exciting time to share with a new family member.  The exciting thing for me with exchange students is that they are so culturally interested in where they are, they want to participate in the traditions as much as possible.  Of course, each family celebrates the holiday in their own way, but that makes it even more fun.

Our Thanksgiving weekend started off with snow on Wednesday, which was predicted.  Some places got snow that stuck around and you could actually see, but we just got to see it come down and not much else happened.  It's even hard to see in the picture I took, but it did snow.

The kids get off school on Wednesday, although Ine's school was open for half a day.  I got lazy and told her I didn't really feel like taking her down there for half a day if she wasn't dying to go, and she agreed she would rather sleep in, so she had her first absence.  We used the time to bake pies for Thanksgiving day.

We made an apple and a pumpkin pie during the morning, and then a German chocolate cake pie during the evening.  It was really fun and the girls did a great job!  The pumpkin looks professional.

We spent Wednesday evening at my sister's for my niece Dorothea's 6th birthday party.  It was Ine's first time at my sister's, and I think her first birthday party here, but given it was just family, it wasn't like some of the really crazy kid parties I've been to.  We had a dinner of sandwiches and salads, and then birthday cake and presents.  The kids had a blast.  I took Ine home to prepare for the next day.

Unfortunately my dad and I had a falling out on Wednesday evening, so it was decided he and my sister would spend Thanksgiving together and I would spend it at my house with my mom and her boyfriend.  The girls and I started our morning with a brisk walk so we could eat with impunity.  Then, because we were going to have 6 fewer people at dinner, I decided to bring some extra food over to the people at Feed Fred who were putting on a dinner for the community's homeless.  The guy who runs it, Carl, hilariously said to me as we were leaving, "I can tell this is your daughter, you two look exactly alike!" and pointed to Ine.  I said, "Nope, sorry, this one is mine" and pointed to Leah.  But it was kind of cute how that happened!

When we got home, I put Ine and Leah to work early helping to prepare dinner for the family, and I gave them each special tasks.  Ine's job was to chop up potatoes for mashed potatoes and to fold napkins.  She spent a good bit of time on line trying to find the perfect napkin selection.  This was something she had done before and she seemed happy to be given that job.  She ultimately chose to fold hearts.

Leah's job was to make everyone pilgrim hats.  I had found a hat kit at Wegman's and bought it, and it had hats for both the men and the women.  This is a cartoon-y version of what kind of hats the pilgrims wore, but it gives you an idea of what the hats are supposed to look like:

Leah was not happy that there were no decorations on the hats, so she decided to modify hers by drawing butterflies and whatnot on them.  The rest of the hats, we chose to leave plain.

 

After the preparations are done, it is pretty much a waiting game till the turkey is done cooking.  My mom and Craig arrived, and we set the table and started the final food making--mashing potatoes, warming rolls and casseroles,  and I gave Ine the job of getting the cranberry sauce out of the can.  Beginner's luck, she got it out in one piece and it looked beautiful.  This is something I rarely, if ever, accomplish.

Although we don't ever do this, and I don't think most families do, we chose to put the turkey on the table whole, on a platter, as a brief discussion with Ine and Kathy earlier in the month revealed this is what is shown in movies so it must be what they do in America, right?  But actually, it was kind of ceremonial to have the turkey carved at the table.  I liked it.

Once the food was out, we decided to take a family photo, and honestly, it is the most perfect Thanksgiving picture that I have ever been in.  The hats look great, the food looks great, the table is festive, everyone is smiling, it's just perfect.  I was so pleased with it.

After dinner and pie were consumed, the tryptophan coma began.  For those who haven't eaten turkey, turkey contains a hormone called tryptophan that causes drowsiness.  Many Americans put on a football game after dinner and fall asleep.  Unfortunately, with Leah around, we don't get that luxury.  Maybe when she's a teenager... So one of our family traditions is to watch the Claymation Christmas Special on Thanksgiving night--Thanksgiving is over and we can start to look forward to Christmas guilt free.  We enjoyed watching dumb bells, singing camels, ice skating walruses and more.  I finally got Leah to bed around her usual 7PM and then I hung on till 9:00 myself before giving up fighting the turkey and going to bed.  I was totally exhausted!

The next morning, Leah was going to spend with her cousins, so I met up with my sister and the Marine Corps Museum and dropped her off.  She was excited to get to spend the day with her cousins and grandfather, and I was pleased to have some peace and quiet while I cleaned up from the holiday.  I got home and went to the gym and then picked Ine up to go visit my mother for the afternoon.  We have a post-Thanksgiving tradition on the weekend after of playing cards or doing puzzles and eating leftovers, so we did just that.

We have a card game called "Sticks" which was taught to me at home by my friend Linette, and which neither Craig nor Ine knew how to play.  So we busted out the sticks and cards and played for quite some time.  It was really, really fun!  That night, I picked up Leah and my niece, Dorothea, who had decided to spend the weekend with us, and we drove down to the State Fairgrounds to see the Illumination Holiday Village.  This is a giant light show that just opened this year for the first time.  Ine let me know on the way down that she thought it was way too early to do anything pertaining to Christmas--in her opinion Christmas didn't start till after Sinterklaas's visit on December 5th (sorry, you'll have to wait for a future blog post before you get to know what that is!), and it kind of made her a little angry that Christmas was starting so early.  So I told her I hoped she would change her mind when we got there, and waited to see what would happen.  

Drive through light tunnel at the fairgrounds

The light show was actually a lot of fun.  You tune your radio to a particular frequency and the music playing matches how the lights flash on and off. One of our favorite things was that they had these little elves and the elves mouth's were singing along to the music.  It was pretty impressive how they managed to do that.  I made Ine take video.  There were trees and candy canes, horses, snowflakes, all kinds of lights, something like 80 million Christmas lights are strung up for this thing.  There were a LOT of cars going through, so we got hung up a bit here and there, especially in the tunnels, which everyone just wanted to sit in and be surrounded by blinking lights (myself included), but it still only took about 40 minutes or so. 

Included in the price of admission was a ticket to Santa's village.  There were rides and crafts there, but it was already past 9pm and getting late, so I tried to get out of going, but unfortunately, Leah REALLY wanted to go.  Once inside, everything had an additional charge, so I told them they couldn't do any of the 'rides' and things, but we did get in line to meet Santa.  Ine said she had never met a real Santa before, she had always been too scared, so I decided to purchase pictures so that she would have a souvenir of the visit.  I think they came out so cute, don't you?

Afterwards, I asked Ine if she had fun.  She admitted she did, she was surprised herself, but she really enjoyed it even if it did seem early!  Yay!

The rest of the weekend was a blur of card playing, swimming lessons, leftovers, kids, and family in and out.  I took Ine to see the movie St. Vincent, which I'd been wanting to see and hadn't had the chance to do.  Monday she still didn't have school, although Leah did, so she went to swim practice and then went to the mall with Jana.  She was a typical teenager who didn't want to go back to school on Monday, but she was happy to get back into her routine with swimming and whatnot, I think, so that was good.  All in all, it was a really lovely holiday weekend.  It was great to share it with Ine and Leah both--Leah is still at the age she gets excited about all these things, which is fun, and Ine is excited to learn new traditions.  Overall, I think Thanksgiving is pretty much the perfect holiday--lots of time to kick back and relax, no worries about commercial concerns, just hang out with family and friends and have fun.I hope Ine enjoyed it as much as I did!