Kicking off the Holidays with Turkey

This time last year, our family was spread all over the country and life was incredibly overwhelming.  Now, all of that is just a memory and we've had 10 months back to our "normal" routines.  There is so very much to be thankful and, oddly, I'm thankful for the experience of last year and how it has helped me to appreciate my family and all the mundane things about family life.

I got a nice Thanksgiving giggle from a preschool art project that J did.  It's a turkey picture and the middle of the turkey is supposed to have what the child is thankful for at Thanksgiving.  J seems to understand the plight of the turkey because his said "I am thankful for chicken."  I don' t know why I got such a kick out of that, but I did.

Aunt B hosted Turkey day and it was quite yummy, even though, V and J were unwilling, which meant that  mommy ate her plate standing up in the living room.  I'm hopeful that in a couple years, we might actually be able to sit at a table for more than 3 minutes.  *fingerscrossed*  Grammy made her famous pumpkin pie with fresh whipped cream and the kids were quite the little helpers.  If J could have gotten within reach of the bowl, it would have been devoured.  The thing that J loved even more than the whipped cream, though, was the iPad cousin K brought.  He better not have his hopes up, because his Santa is just not that generous.

We decorated and put up the tree over the Thanksgiving break.  I say "over" because it took several days. Two toddlers + lots of ornaments = lots of breaks to tame the chaos.   All the kids helped and we did have a nice time of it, though.  Only 3 ornaments were lost to breakage or attempted ingestion, which is much better than I had anticipated.  Of course, it didn't hurt that the bottom half (i.e., within sticky hand reach) was decorated entirely with plastic, wood or felt ornaments.  The kids have gotten a huge kick out of the numerous animatronic singing Christmas decorations we have.  I really hope they survive the season, though.

We also had our annual tradition (okay, this is only the third year) of watching a Christmas movie together while eating freshly baked sour cream spice cookies.  This year's movie was Jim Carey's Grinch and I couldn't get over how much V looks a little like Cindy Loo Hoo.  Of course, I think she's cuter, but I'm a wee bit biased.

We're already really enjoying this holiday season and hope that everyone else is too.