a lot of thanksgiving

So I've finally put together all my best pictures from our Thanksgiving in Chimicum, and summarized the weekend. Now that Thanksgiving is totally over and it's all about Christmas. And I didn't even start on the Sunday Thanksgiving at my parents' house... (Didn't bring the camera there, though- Andrea's blog will have to cover it!). Oh well- I'll be behind on Christmas too, I'm sure. So here they are...

Lydia helping Flavia put together a delicious, as always, Thanksgiving meal! The girls are always happy to see each other- lots to talk about!

Lydia's boyfriend Trevor, watching football with the guys. No, he doesn't have antlers. Doesn't it look that way though? Cool horns, Trevor!

Thea teaching Josiah to use the voice-recording parrot. Thanks, Thea! :)

Thea brought craft supplies so Sol could teach the kids to make paper pumpkins for the table- a good way to pass some time, and it turned out very cute. They made the paper flowers too. Grandmom brought the carefully pressed Maple leaves from her tree in Canada.

A friend brought over a few big bags of delicious clams. Aaron cooked them up, and the kids eagerly dug in. All but Josiah- but do you see that he's thinking about it? If you know anything about his taste, it's shocking that he would even consider eating the clams. Maybe it was the other kids' enthusiasm, but he actually decided to try one! He was pretty wary, but once he got it down, he decided it wasn't that bad, and had two more! Unbelievable.

Sol and Josiah love to play around the property together... They stomp through the woods, play hide and seek, watch the chickens... On Thanksgiving Day they decided they wanted to go with the big guys to shoot the guns down in the field. (I just had to go to, of course). The dad's gave them their lessons, and they each took a turn shooting (with uncle's help). Josiah even hit his target once. I thought they'd want to do it several times, but after the first time, all they wanted to do was pick up everyone's bullet casings. They had quite a collection of shiny treasures jangling in their pockets. Quote of the day from Aaron- "There's nothing like firing off a few rounds of ammunition to say Happy Thanksgiving!"(If you read this tell me if I got that wrong!)

Sol, giving one of his heartfelt soliloquies to the old empty chicken coop.

Sol and Siah giving me their "tough guy" faces.



After all that running around, they fell sound asleep together on Grandma's bed.

Here is grandmom (on a stool, she's not that tall) with some long-time Heineman family friends, the Reinertsens- Dad, Rick in the middle, son Sam on the left and son-in-law Mark on the right. We got a call at the house the day after Thanksgiving that they were being airlifted to the hospital after their crabbing boat capsized and they spent over an hour floating in very chilly saltwater... Thankfully they were spotting by someone up high on land who called the coast guard, and after a few hours of treatment in the hospital were released to go home, unharmed. We were all so grateful for their rescue, we had to get together the next day for another Thanksgiving- with something very real to be thankful for! Not that we shouldn't be, or are not, thankful for food, but with the abundance that we've become all too accustomed to, I think it's hard to keep in mind that food equals survival like the pilgrims did, wouldn't you think? Most of us seem more worried about separating ourselves from food. Anyway, in this, second Thanksgiving, we were very thankful to have our friends there with us! We were also thankful that they brought over the crab they'd been after. It was so good.

A pleasure indeed to have Grandmom with us- she had to get up a 4am to catch the ferry, just to spend time with us! I think she is a top notch great-grandmother.

Here are some guys we hired to work on stuff while we ate a bunch of turkey. In lieu of payment, we fed them eventually. They were quite grateful. A good time was had by all.

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.