Thanksgiving Break

We had a fabulous, relaxing Thanksgiving break. I hope you did too! On Thursday, we went to morning Mass (the best way to kick off Thanksgiving) and then prepped dinner while these two little turkeys were napping. 
 

We read our one Thanksgiving book, watched the Charlie Brown special, and finished up dinner before our guests arrived at 5:00.



Claire was thrilled to help with the gravy and cheese sauce.



While Maggie was content to watch Daddy take the turkey off the grill. Our oven still isn't working properly, so we followed the America's Test Kitchen recipe for grill-roasted turkey instead. It turned out perfectly and was super, super easy. We kept the rest of the meal pretty simple - mashed potatoes, gravy, broccoli with cheese sauce, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, whipped cream, and apple cider. We invited a Canadian family from church (they have a daughter Maggie's age) and one of Adam's coworkers, who just moved here from Switzerland, to join us. The Canadians brought turnips (a big Thanksgiving thing there) and the Swiss guy brought chocolate, of course! Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of our meal, but we had a great time.



It was pouring rain on Friday, but we forged ahead with our plan to hit up the aquarium. It was surprisingly packed, but the girls both enjoyed seeing the fish, seals, and otters. We walked down the waterfront afterwards to finally eat lunch at Ivar's (getting soaked in the process, I might add) only to learn that the restaurant is closed due to seawall construction for the next six months! So, we scrambled and came up with Plan B - Uneeda Burger in Fremont. It was delicious, quick, cheap, family-friendly, and we lucked into a parking spot right out front.



On Saturday, we woke up to snow! This was an extremely exciting occurrence because snow is fairly rare in Seattle, although it's always found a short drive away in the mountains. Claire was ecstatic and immediately started singing "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" so Adam obliged.





Claire insisted on the carrot nose, raisin eyes, and scarf.



Meanwhile, Maggie and I stood around looking cute in our red coats. I think I will enjoy our backyard a lot more when she's walking.

Our parish is in charge of coordinating meals for the town's winter homeless shelter. We signed up to bring a meal once a month and Saturday evening was our first day. We spent the rest of the morning picking up supplies at Costco, since you're also asked to bring easy breakfast and lunch items. (Costco on a holiday weekend is insane, by the way. The experience made me so glad to be a stay-at-home mom who can run errands on relatively calm weekdays.) We made spaghetti and meatballs for fifty people that afternoon, by far the easiest meal we could think of.

Sunday was morning Mass, just like always, followed by decorating for advent and putting up our Christmas lights outside. More on that tomorrow...

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about our thankful project!



At the beginning of November, I cut out a bunch of leaves and bought a burlap wreath at the craft store. Our goal was to sit down with Claire each day to write down what we're thankful for and have her decorate the leaf. We only ended up completing seven over the cross of the month. It's hard to fit in craft time right now. It was also harder than I thought to explain what thankful means to a two-year-old. But I'm still glad we did it. Maybe next year we'll only focus on the week of Thanksgiving?