a spot of thankfulness

 

Happy Thanksgiving All. I am chiefly thankful today to be in my house and not in line in any kind of store. I'm thankful for a lot of other stuff too, but its hard to remember any of it from the over abiding glow of Not having to go outside today for any reason. Anyway, on Wednesday, we made pie. Everyone got to make their own little pie. The two large ones, I guess, are for me, since Matt won't eat them. I suppose I could share with the children....

And Matt cut the table legs down and one of the chairs so that when I sit at the table, my feet can touch the floor. 

And I got ready for Advent. I'm saving my money for an elaborate candle holder for next year (I have an envelope). So this year I used tea cups. You can see the deep theological significance of all the candles being in opaque teacups except the Light of Christ which is in clear glass. 

And then I discovered bits of my missing Scandinavian light dinging thing (boo, can't find all the parts) so I re-appropriated it for a mini advent wreath.

Thursday morning I baked bread and cinnamon rolls. My wonderful and clever grandparents sent me the cookie cutters (which we couldn't wait to use and so stuffed bread into) and the Swedish horse baking pans. I must say, at the early hour it was, NO ONE was as excited about this shape as I was which put me out. Thwarted everyone by taking a lot of pictures of it instead of serving up the bread. Alouicious felt he was going to die of hunger. All the rolls were gone in 7 3/4 minutes.

 The baby Swedish horse was so so so amazingly cool.

 All the the pictures are blurry because children repeatedly kept finding and sucking on the camera or putting their fat fingers directly on the lens. Spent large portions of the day yelling about it. There was still quite a long wait at the moment of this picture.

Elphine's cat got into the package from my grandparents and went absolutely nuts. We thought there might have been a large sprinkling of catnip. She ate one of the little foam angels (well, chewed it thoroughly) and then did a series of mad dashes around the room crashing into furniture.

Still waiting for dinner. Alouicious hoping that an attitude of prayer will bring a swifter conclusion to his suffering. You'll notice we had a starter of steamed artichokes with two kinds of dressings. On the whole it was a success. Nobody gagged and everybody was intrigued.

 Elphine rescuing angel bits from her evil cat.

 We decorated! As in, some of us glued some leaves to some paper. That was actually a week or so ago. It gives the illusion of order and craftiness, I think, where none actually exist.

 Back to the Swedish Horse pan. Marigold tried desperately to smear her snot covered hands all over it before I could get it in the oven. As I took the picture, I screamed and shouted for her to stop it and get down. Went back to bed when it was in the oven as there seemed no point in trying to carry on living after such an ordeal.

The baby slept a lot of the day. She has a bad cold and FOUR TEETH cutting at once on the top. Poor poor poor baby.

Eventually we did finally sit down to dinner. All I did was the artichokes and all the bread and pie. Matt outdid himself on the matter of the turkey--his best yet, hands down (no stuffing, brined for 18 hours, rubbed inside and out with various concoctions, seared at 500 degrees, breastplated and roasted at 350 for another many hours)--gravy, potatoes, asparagus. We sat around for hours in total comfort, both of all our feet touching the floor, grateful for another year of eating.