Happy Thanksgiving

M, E & A

Thanksgiving may just be my favorite holiday. It’s not overly commercialized, it’s all about the food, it’s also all about family, and the message is beautiful: take time to be thankful for all you have. I had great intentions of doing a blog post each day for the four days preceeding Thanksgiving and focusing one day each on T, E, A & M. (Awesome accronym, huh?) Alas, the girls have been cutting bottom teeth this week. as well as joining E in the battle against a nasty cold/cough. Much tissue has been used and by bedtime I’ve been more than ready to call it a day. Instead. I’m doing a really long post today all about our Thanksgiving and what made it so special to me.

On Tuesday, E and I made our Thanksgiving centerpiece. I try to have E do an art project every day and when we cleared our breakfast dishes I saw our leftover Halloween pumpkins and thought about how I needed to do something with them. Almost instantly I had the idea to make one of them into a turkey. I haven’t had spontaneous craft ingeniouty like that for years. E gathered all our supplies and when A & M napped we set to work

I think it turned out so cute. And did I mention that I freehanded the turkey head. That’s a big deal for me. I make lousy stick figures and lopsided hearts so the fact that his head looks half normal is amazing.

This is beautiful Miss A after her bath this morning and it’s also the closest thing I’ve seen to her full blown smile all week. Poor little thing. Teething has been rougher on her than it has for M, but I think her teeth could cut through any day now.

And little Miss M, what can I say? You are your camera wielding Mommy’s dream come true. This little peanut smiles on demand all day long. She’s such a delight. And did I mention that I got these adorable little onesies at Kohl’s for around $4 a piece. Love it.

Daddy & E spent a lot of time wrestling and giggling and teasing each other today. Lucky me, I caught one of E’s speciality puppy kisses and it’s resultant joy.

I made pate brisee and snitched quite a bit for myself. Please ignore the desperate funk my hair was in today. Yikes.

Then I baked up a batch of my sister’s fabulous WW rolls. I’m not kidding when I say that these things are heaven . They came out of the oven while E was napping so T and I snitched two a piece before dinner.

I love that look on his face: epicurean indulgence. And look how handsome he is! I love it when my man wears sweaters. And, weird fact, but have you ever noticed that T has the most atractive man hands! I kid not. He laughs it off, but I seriously think we should pursue options as a male hand model.

Me and my gorgeous girlies. I just realized that I did the same thing with them that I would do with E. We’re dressed to match. I seriously never intend to , but if I’m having a "green day" I unconsciously dress us all the same. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve had to change before leaving the house because of that unfornate coincidence.

FOOD! GLORIOUS FOOD! I did a little prep work every day this week so that today we only had baking to do. It makes Thanksgiving so laid back and enjoyable while also still having a delactable meal. This year we had: WW dinner rolls, spring greens, my sister’s amazing stuffing (it has sourdough bread, bacon, leeks, red bell peppers, and celery), galic and rosemary roast turkey breast, my mom’s fresh cranberry sauce, citrus sweet potatoes with meringue, upside down cranberry ginger cake and deconstructed pumpkin pie. As I type this I’m sitting on my bed with my top button undone and I don’t regret that at all. Not at all.

M & A had barley and green beans. Yumm!

This is a tradition we started this year that I first heard about over at this hilarious blog. We loved it! About one week into the month we cut out the tree and the leaves and each morning we would write something we were grateful for on a leaf and afix it to our thankful tree with sticky tack. It helped us stay in the attitude of thanksgiving all month long and helped us be constantly aware of all our blessings. It taught me a lot about our family and gave me insights into E and the thing he values: “peanut butter,” doors”, his “sisters”, and “wrestling dad” to name a few. We’ve decided to hang onto each years’ leaves and then look back at the previous years with every new Thanksgiving.

My life is indeed richly blessed and I hope that all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, too.