Thanksgiving

This year our Thanksgiving celebrations were different than usual.  Every year since we moved to North Carolina, we have spent the holiday up in New Jersey with my dad and family, and the Saturday after Thanksgiving is usually spent romping around New York City.  But this year with the arrival of our small son, we knew it would be a year to stay close to home.

Part of our Thanksgiving tradition this year was introducing a Thanksgiving tree.  Gigi and I gathered dead sticks on a nature walk, my mom artfully arranged them in a watering can, and I sat down with scissors and scraps of paper and cut out leaves.  In the days prior to Thanksgiving and in the days since, we have been busy writing down things we are thankful for on each of the leaves.  Gigi has been fun to watch; at first the concept of gratitude was only getting to her on a concrete level, and her contributions were things she could see, like "windows" and "chairs", but over the past week she has started to think of more abstract ideas.  She has added "pets" to our Thanksgiving tree, and "my house", and today her contribution was, "I am thankful for planets: saturn, earth and mars".  

Because I have mixed feelings towards turkeys and my ability to cook them well, and knowing that we would have a new baby in the house at holiday time, I had decided months ago to keep the meal simple and just buy rotisserie chicken for Thanksgiving this year.  My mom talked me into at least roasting a chicken with vegetables, and with all of the ladies in the house contributing a few dishes, we had a complete meal of roasted chicken and vegetables, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing and cranberry sauce, green bean casserole and grapes, and a Brazilian Christmas cake, chocolate pecan pie, and an apple pie to top off the evening.  At the time it felt like an enormous amount of food, but with one more meal of leftovers the following night, we wiped out the Thanksgiving meal almost entirely!  Yes! 

Luckily, the desserts have lasted long enough to have for breakfast for the past few days.  Mmmm....

I do hope that next year we get to be up North with my dad and our New England family, but this year it was perfect to spend a quiet week at home with baby Orion and our local family.  Having a loving family and a superb community of friends, having the means to prepare a Thanksgiving feast, having a warm home and cars that function, and especially being parents to these healthy strong children gives us so much to be thankful for!  Happy Thanksgiving!