Thanksgivng

I'm thankful for the help I had preparing Thanksgiving dinner, and I'm thankful for my family.

I had help making rolls... They didn't turn out quite like mom's, but were fun to make. Liam kept eating his dough...

On Bill's way home from Football he stopped and bought a couple of things I forgot to get, and he brought me home flowers. I loved them! So bright and harvest colored. I love when he surprises me and brings me home flowers. I don't NEED Roses, or anything fancy. I just love that he thinks of me and will bring me flowers (even if it's just from the grocery store). :-)

Bill is the Apple Pie man at our house usually. He makes what he calls a Frumpy Apple Pie - he stuff's as manyapples as he can in the pie. After Playing football with the guys from church that morning, He was laying on the couch watching football... and we were having fun in the kitchen, so Hannah did most of the apple pie this year. Mom helped with the apples (since the apple slicer was a little unwieldy for Hannah alone), and Amanda helped by making the pie dough. Liam helped out by eating the apples...dad came and helped with putting the top crust on. We ended up with a lattice top since we were running out of dough. It turned out quite Lovely and tasted very good.

And of course there are a couple of other Thanksgiving traditions - Amanda donned the Olives on her fingers...







We were cooking several things at once, and we had JUST looked in the oven and the marshmallows were barely getting a slight color to them, and in no time at all they had burned to a crisp... Rebekah peeled them off the top of the sweet potato cassarole and we topped it with fresh marshmallows, and cooked them till they were lovely toasted brown and yummy.

Something I have wanted to do for a long time, but I've had a somewhat small table and a lot of young children for a lot of years, and so we normally eat on our regular dishes (plastic) or paper plates. This year I just really wanted to have a special dinner, and I got out the China.

Years ago I got my china - very basic, white with silver rims around it. When my mother died, I got her china. I packed it up and took it to my friend (and Bishop)'s house and Sister C let me store my mom's china at her house. It spent 20 years in her basement underneath the pool table. I finally had her send it to me a year or two ago, when I felt like we were somewhat stable, and It needed to get out of her way. My mothers china is grey with white flowers, and it has a silver rim around the outside.

When we lived in Japan, I bought a set of china there. It is a white background, with japanese scenes on it in a grey color - Mt. Fugi, etc, with pink cherry blossoms, and it has silver rims around it, so I thought it might be cool to have the three sets that might all blend together with each other, and some day... if, after I die, my kids all want the china, they could each get a couple of each set - my old china, my mothers - their grandmother's, and the Japanese set where they all lived (except for Liam).

So I got out a tablecloth that my mother had, and washed the china, and put it on the table (with a little sparkling juice to celebrate the day). I mixed and matched the china at each place setting, and I think it looked nice. It was nice to think of my mom as I got out her china.

I brought in a little table to make more room at the table, and Hannah and Liam were very excited about sitting there, so that worked out nicely. Sariah ended up sitting at another little table (a desk from her summer classroom) to make room to set a few more things on...

Liam was getting quite fussy just before we managed to eat dinner, and I knew he was tired, but dinner was just about on the table. He started eating his dinner, but then climbed up in dad's lap, and fell asleep. At some point Bill put him up in bed, and he woke up and came back downstairs, climbed up on dad and fell back asleep, so he napped while Bill watched some t.v. Amanda is so silly some times. As she was eating, her plate was all cleaned off, except for these last three green beans, and they were in a 'smiley face' pattern. Amanda was so funny, and her face was all smiley with a big grin too, to end off our meal!