Over the years of celebrating an American holiday in a foreign country, we have had to adapt to changing circumstances. Nicholas’ school does not offer joker days, so we had been eating later in the day, when he comes home. This year, however, he was able to be home earlier due to cancelled classes. Hooray! And none of the missionaries serving in our ward are from America, so we stopped inviting them over. But we did invite a friend and her family over instead. Unfortunately, her husband had to work, but she and her adorable daughter came over to celebrate with us.
In order to have an enjoyable holiday without me being all stressed out and exhausted, I have learned to start prep really early. I made the cranberry ice 5 days ahead of time.I cleaned the house for two days, and then I baked the pies, peeled the potatoes, and boiled the eggs the day before. And with eating later in the day, that leaves me lots of time to enjoy the day with my children and have fun letting them help me in the kitchen. They also love to decorate and Sophie is awesome at setting a beautiful table. As they have gotten older and are capable of doing more and more, our Thanksgivings have expanded and gotten fancier.
I think the kids’ favorite part of Thanksgiving, aside from all the desserts, is being at home playing when they know all their friends are still at school. 🙂
They had cleaned up the Playmobil area the Saturday before, which always makes it more fun to play in and mess up. haha.
Noah spent his free time reading.
Chris always gets excited watching the table slowly fill up with more and more food. And thanks to our subscription to ESPN he can even have a football game on in the background! Finally everything was finished and it was time to eat!
A new tradition we were introduced to this year was Thanksgiving pinatas! Chris was a bit confused when Rochelle said her family always did a pinata on Thanksgiving. “Wait, Rochelle is Mexican?” No, apparently her family just likes to hit things. 🙂 Her daughter, Liza, was so cute. She was afraid of the turkey Rochelle had made, but then when we started whacking it, she got very sad that we were hurting it.
I hung it up on the nail we always use to secure the Christmas tree, but the kids got a little too aggressive and it came right out of the ceiling!
They got in a few good swings before that happened, though. Inside were some fun treats they could use to come off the pie sugar high slowly. 🙂
It was a very enjoyable Thanksgiving and I am so glad we could celebrate with friends. We have been so richly blessed with all that truly matters in this life and it is nice to have a day to commemorate that. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!