holiday preparations- one way or another

What do you do if you are six years old, and you know that Christmas is coming, and your aunties have decorated, but all your mom wants to do is work on baking for Thanksgiving? You recruit your little brother, fill him in on the mission, haul out all the paste, paper, tape, and crayons, move chairs around and just hang stuff up on your own- that's what you do!

Naomi's wreath

A pop-up Christmas scene, by Naomi

A snowball, taped to the pantry by Josiah. Bet you never knew wadded up copy paper could be so festive! My camera just doesn't do it justice.

Naomi is so excited for Christmas- probably more so than others... She heard about the activity of Christmas Carolling- going door to door singing!- from Uncle Matt and Aunt Dani, and found it fascinating. In fact, the other day we were eating breakfast, and she was trying to convince me to throw off other plans for the day so that we could just Christmas carol around the neighborhood. On a Monday morning. I had all sorts of excuses, of course, like that we didn't have enough people, and that they didn't know many songs, etc., but none were holding water. She had comebacks. But when I told her that we couldn't carol no matter what because we had to run to Costco to pick up more Christmas lights, she was about to accept defeat... "Oh, man. There aren't any doors there to carol." But then- "Oooh!! I know! We can just go in the bathroom and knock on the little stalls and sing to the ladies in there! Yes!" Here is a girl who knows how to overcome obstacles!

This year I told each of the kids they could choose a dessert to make for Thanksgiving in Chimicum. They really enjoyed selecting and making the desserts, and the positive feedback they got later. It would have been a little overwhelming had Naomi not chosen to make Jello-Jigglers- no problem!

Naomi's Jigglers in progress

She decided to use no less than 10 cookie cutters to make them into shapes such as the tea-pot above, tulips, snowflakes, and so on. Why limit Thanksgiving to turkeys?!

First few Jigglers completed.

Eva chose to make Butterscotch Pecan Perfection Pie. We are not experienced pie crust makers, so had to follow the recipe carefully. Also, we did not want to use Crisco and used only butter, which I read makes it harder, so we had low hopes but were pleasantly surprised, and not too humble about the success of the crust! I guess it's not that hard.

Anyway- so the last step of the recipe said to shape the crust into a disc to refrigerate. As she read it, Eva asked me, "So a disc... do I make the hole in the middle or what? That's weird that she wants it in the shape of a CD..." I had to explain that the word "disc" has been around for ages before the invention of apparently the only thing she knows as a disc! Below- her pie, which we over did a little- my fault. Still tasted nice.

Josiah chose to make Chocolate Satin Pie- fortunately quite simple. He loved the whole cooking process, especially stirring at the stove.

After I took these pictures he said, "OK, now stop taking pictures so I can really focus!"

The finished product, before refrigeration. Looks a little unappealing, but actually tasted really good. I think next time we'll chose a healthier category for all this food prep, but of course this was fun.

So I'll have to do another post about the actual Thanksgiving celebrations, because I have too many great pictures to share- this post would be so big. Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving holiday.