As in years past, we celebrated Thanksgiving by taking the kids out of school for the day and inviting the missionaries over to eat with us. We used one of the two joker days each child gets every school year. These are basically "mental health" days. You can use them whenever, for whatever, as long as you give the teacher a week's notice. I didn't write the reason on the notes I had the kids give to the teachers, but they are a smart bunch. When the kids left on Wednesday, most of the teachers wished them a Happy Thanksgiving! :)
All morning long they would ask me, "If I were at school, what would I be doing now?" A day off is so much more enjoyable when you know every one else is sitting there taking a math test, or whatever. The kids didn't just play around all morning, though. They were each taking turns helping me out in the kitchen. Nicholas broke up all the bread into tiny little pieces for the stuffing. Sophie assembled all the cute turkeys and glued them on our napkin rings.
She and Sarah set the table and decorated the fireplace. Noah helped me make the rolls. And all the kids took a turn making the pull aparts. Some people call this monkey bread, but we call it pull aparts, because you have to pull them apart to eat them. 🙂
A few days before Thanksgiving, we got a call from the missionaries wanting to know if they could bring an investigator to eat with us. They were meeting him for an appointment earlier in the day, and since he was an American, living alone in Zurich, they felt bad that they would be leaving to go eat a nice meal and he wouldn't. I am embarrassed to admit that I did hesitate just a tad before saying yes. The whole reason we do Thanksgiving alone and not with the big group from church is because we like it to stay intimate. But, really, how horrible would I be to say no? Hector ended up being a very nice man, and a very attentive audience for all the children's antics. He was missing his large family, full of nieces and nephews back home in America, and our kids helped fill that void. Of course, I had to seat him next to me, as Chris isn't the best at small talk with strangers. 🙂
We bought our turkey in Germany, as usual. The store we go to has these giant huge turkeys, plus geese, duck, and rabbit for your holiday dining pleasure. But what I love is they also have these special "baby" turkeys, that are pretty much the size of a large chicken; a bit over 5 pounds. Perfect for my family of non-turkey eaters. It isn't Thanksgiving without turkey, but only two of us really like it, and two others will have a small piece or two. What my family loves is ham, so we always have that as well. But it was still big enough that there was enough for all our guests, and a bit of leftovers.
Having guests also meant that I could go ahead and make three different kinds of pie instead of just two. No one but me likes pecan pie, but if there are other people willing to help me eat it, I will go ahead and bake one. The missionaries brought over some homemade brownies as well, which was perfect. Only Nick eats pie out of all my children, but they scarfed those brownies down lickety split!
Elder Schulte passed out different colored feathers and had us all write two things we were thankful for on them. Then we glued them to his hand drawn turkey and hung it up. The kids also played a wild game of Pin the Hat on the Turkey, courtesy of Aunt Liz. It was originally hanging up on the wall near the table, but after the second kid crashed into the corner trying to manouver the turn around the chairs, we moved it to a different spot.
It took me the next two days to completely recover and clean up from all that cooking, but it was totally worth it. And the best part? There is still cranberry ice in the freezer to snack on.