Scenes from Thanksgiving

It's obviously taken me a while to get pictures up from Thanksgiving- so I'm not going to take even more time to narrate the whole thing. Here are some pictures from our Thanksgiving day. We started the day with cinnamon rolls and the parade and ended it with pie and lots of playing. We had 21 people, which does count Penny and Vivian, who didn't eat turkey. Still, we had two turkeys and 6 pies. We're still eating turkey soup over here, but the house is a lot quieter. We really enjoyed having everyone here! I'll post a few supplemental photos soon...

One Little Indian

 Henry's class had their Thanksgiving feast yesterday. The kids got to sign their parents up for what they wanted us to bring. Henry put me in charge of pumpkin pie. We made two on Thursday night, but my little recipe reader forgot to read me the directions that say to turn the heat down after the first 15 minutes. So the crusts got a little dark. I shouldn't blame him, though...I should have remembered that step myself.

First all the classes lined up in the gym, sang a turkey song and named some things they are thankful for.

 They all sat down with the placemats they had made.

 There was lots of food to be had. That's Henry's teacher, Mrs. Corona, in the black.

 Clara was right there at her brother's elbow, as always.

 I think all of the little Pilgrims and Indians had a fun time!

Thankfulness

Rob, Carrie and Eleanor came in Wednesday night to stay for a few days. Here are The Captain and Tenille before leaving for Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. Actually, this was before we left for ours. Rob had not showered yet and they went to Carrie's family for dinner.
We went to Deerfield where Liz and Van had been for a while and some other family members came too (cousins of Mary's). I got to spend some nice time with Vivian.
We also got some good shots of all 3 cousins together. I think Vivian loved hanging out with her older cousins. They adore her and made lots of googly faces at her, which made her giggle!
Check out that full-bodied joy! What fun to be a baby!
Uncle Pete is also a huge fan of babies. Here he is talking football with Viv. I was going to say "introducing" her to football, but I've seen some photos of Vivian and her dad snoozing in front of a game.
She's quite fashionable already.
I was in charge of pies for the dinner, so my children got to lick the whipped cream beaters. I'm a huge proponent of letting children lick the beaters or spatulas...whatever the case may be.
I couldn't decide what to make, so I made 3 desserts, but then ended up with a 4th after I took some cinnamon rolls across the street to Ed and Helena yesterday morning. The dessert on the far left is called Nantucket Cranberry Pie and it was almost more like a cobbler- with the cakey crust on top. The back pie is a banana pumpkin mousse from Ed's restaurant (Carrie's enjoying some of it next to me on the couch right now) the middle one is a pretty standard pumpkin. Though I forgot the new trick I had read of baking it on top of a pizza stone to help the bottom of the crust bake a little better. In front in the red spring form pan is an apple tart that was my favorite.
Pete got to help cut the turkey.
And Henry and Clara were the first at the table. This was before Clara spilled her little cup of water. Other than that, and some extra getting-up-and-running-around the dinner went very well and was delicious.
This morning we avoided all of the door busters, but did head out early to take the kids to a 9:50AM showing of Tangled, which was great! It was a first movie for Clara and Eleanor, who both sat through the whole thing. Henry loved it too. Clara did get up to dance a few times when there were musical numbers, which will be a great memory and story to tell her about her first theater experience.

Harder than it may seem

This may be the first ever photo shoot of me and my brothers plus our spouses and our kids. You can see that it was even more challenging than trying to get a picture of the 4 cousins together.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We hit the road tomorrow for Thanksgiving in Minnesota. While I'll probably have my computer along so I can work on report cards, I will probably not be posting. So here's your little early dose of Thanksgiving.
Clara with the Mayflower:
Henry in his turkey hat:

Preparations

Today was chock full of Thanksgiving preparations. Clara stayed home with me- due to the pink eye from which she is still recovering- and we did a little shopping. We went to the book store to do an exchange, then I picked up a couple of pie-baking necessities at Crate and Barrel...and a couple of cute dishtowels which were on sale. Because lord knows I need more dish towels. After a crazy stop at the grocery store, we headed home.
I became a little confused when I pulled out my pie pans. The blue one in the back is gigantic, the two glass are small....I only seem to have one normal sized pan. But I made do...
When Henry got home he tried out the new little cookie shaper with some scraps of dough.
And then he helped me use up the extra dough on some pie crust cookies.
Clara took her usual afternoon nap, which allowed me to do a lot of prep, but once she woke up she just wanted attention, attention, attention....Babies! She wouldn't keep her toys on her tray.

I hope everyone has a lovely day and lots to be thankful for tomorrow.