Being thankful

Thanksgiving was a whirlwind around here. We started early by lazing around in our pajamas and watching the Thanksgiving Day parades. My mother always enjoyed parades and I harbor some pretty fond memories of exclaiming over floats ranging from beautiful to down right bizarre. For a while when I was a kid we knew one of the clowns in the Detroit parade and would watch for her when they walked by. We knew the Santa Claus, too, which never struck me as odd—Santa happens to sit next to my parents at the football games every fall, what of it?

We had Thanksgiving brunch with Jon's family this year. That's something we've never done before, but a tradition I might wholeheartedly recommend, since it kept our meal consumption down to just two for the day, albeit it two large ones. We arrived with homemade bagels and pumpkin cupcakes and Calvin went right to work with their juicer. You haven't lived until you've had Calvin's cranberry, orange, banana, something else Thanksgiving brunch surprise, let me tell you.

Brunch, lunch, dinner, it doesn't matter—the warmth of time spent with family, of hugs and of laughter, is what really defines Thanksgiving.

The late afternoon took us to my parents' house, where we put our pumpkin pie and cranberry relish to good service alongside a phenomenal smoked turkey (it's a three day process, I hear), and sundry other delectables. Food, to me, is another part of the definition of this holiday, and being able to contribute adds to the experience.

And what would Thanksgiving be without a little after dinner sewing challenge? We were, every single one of us, charmed into it by the three year old zipping around the table where we sat being too stuffed to move.

It's a grand life filled with love, and for that I am thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving to all

For much of the day our kitchen was warmed by the heat of the oven and the smells of holiday cooking filled our home. The pie is baked, the bagels are made, the cranberry relish and pumpkin cupcakes are done. I love celebrating on the eves of holidays. There's just something about the calm before the storm. Tomorrow we will get up and watch parades before we take off for a full day of running from home to home and devouring as much sweetness as we can, both in love and in food, but tonight we sat back and took it easy. After a full day of baking, and a couple of hours spent on Thanksgiving crafts and book reading, we celebrating Thanksgiving Eve by ordering pizza and eating it on the sitting room floor in front of a roaring fire.

Tomorrow is about a lot more than travel, though. Thanksgiving, after all, is about being thankful. Centuries ago it wouldn't have been known as Thanksgiving, but would have been simply a harvest celebration. Giving thanks for the food that sustains us has long been a tradition in many cultures, but over time quick trips to the grocery store have given us over to forgetfulness; that food has to come from somewhere, and I don't mean produce aisle at your local super store. Don't forget to be thankful for your cook, whoever that might be, and don't forget to be thankful for the farmer(s) who produced the food you will be eating. For our Thanksgiving contributions this year we bought and cooked with almost entirely Michigan products. It was fun to know a little more about the foods we were using, and to be able to say thanks with our purchase power.

We wish you all safe travels, full stomachs, and healthy, happy days with friends and family. Happy Thanksgiving from our bunch of turkeys to yours!

When pigs fly

Thirty minutes. That's how long we spent wandering up and down just one single aisle at Lowes today. Was that single aisle the row of lumber that had drawn us to the store initially? Or a collection of things we actually need, like, oh, a water softener, or maybe a new bathroom faucet? No, the aisle that held us captive for so disgustingly long a time was the corridor of glittering seasonal animatronics; a hallway confused with motion and sizzling with electricity; an arena of robotic toys and decorations competing to grab the attentions of unsuspecting hardware shoppers with increasingly gaudy splendor. We don't do Christmas before Thanksgiving! I refuse. (Can you hear the futility of my objections being drowned out by the constant noise of train wheels, singing snowmen, dancing trees, and squeaking joints on mobile blow-up frippery? Futile, I tell you.)

The trains are what made us stop in the first place. That and the top shelf of blow-up yard decor, purposefully visible from nearly anywhere in the store.

You can take Christmas home early with miniature after miniature of toy stores, car dealerships, or Elvis.

Nothing says Christmas like Elvis, apparently, be it at the drive-in, or at Graceland. You can now be the proud of owner of both, in miniature.

You ain't nothing but a hound dog with a cheap plastic guitar.

And for those of you who, like me, swore that you'd celebrate Christmas before Thanksgiving on the day that pigs fly, for a cool $58 you can now join the ranks of early celebrators with a clear conscience.

Here's hoping you survive the elongated season. As far as I'm concerned, the pig can have his wings, I'm still keeping Christmas at bay until after we've had our turkey.

Halloween

It came, it went, we lost another football game.

I remember when, back in high school and college, the extravagance of celebration went entirely willy nilly when Halloween actually fell on a weekend. For that matter, I remember, back in high school and college, that Halloween came with an extravagance of celebration in the form of haunted houses, hay rides, and parties with dry ice and bad music. There were definitely years that found my friends and I ringing door bells in neighborhoods to which we'd been old enough to drive ourselves. I can only imagine the added thrill at Halloween falling not only on a Saturday, but also on the night before setting the clocks back. Ahhh, elation.

I have heard that celebrating the holidays with your own children is like rediscovering them, and in a way I guess that's true. It's been years since I was out roaming neighborhood streets after dark on Halloween. Last year Calvin had no real interest in ringing the doorbells of houses he didn't know, but this year he caught on quickly. It helped, I think, that we know at least twice as many people in the neighborhood this year, and Calvin himself has become more comfortable socially, so at most doors the answerer knew who he was and was genuinely pleased to see him. Bonus points for that tiny voice saying, with perfect clarity, "trick or treat," followed closely by "happy Halloween thank you," jumbled together as one phrase, all from within a rather large and fuzzy "Honey Pooh" costume.

The "Honey Pooh" costume, as Calvin calls it, was a rather sore point with me. Growing up I made all of my costumes, or at least all of the costumes I can remember; I've been a Dalmatian, a princess, an M&M, a baby doll, and even an Eeyore, all made with my own hands, and last year I made a scarecrow costume for Calvin. So when he asked to be a train engine for Halloween this year I figured it would be no problem. And it would have been, but, as you can clearly see, I did not make Calvin's costume this year. The problem wasn't the job itself, it was the last minute trip to the resale shop for engineer style overalls (to wear under the cardboard box engine I had planned) and the racks full of resale costumes, all marked down for sale before the fast approaching holiday, that caused the ultimate break. We weren't in the resale shop more than five minutes before he spied that Winnie the Pooh costume, too big for him by at least a full size, and the month long wishing for a train costume disappeared down the proverbial drain. I don't think I could have talked him back into the train if I had tried, but to be honest, the short time left to us coupled with the fifty percent mark down (on resale prices to boot, making it a whole $5) won me over before I tried. That, and it's a real costume, not one of those fake polyester things they're selling for $30 a pop these days, so it will last until he outgrows it, which is probably some time down the road yet (it's large size really added to the effect, I must say).

So Halloween is over. Trick-or-Treating was fun (another plus to the Pooh costume—I got to break out the Eeyore costume I made in college). We continued our celebration the next day by being awakened an hour too early, thanks to the resetting of the clocks (another bit of nostalgia—I remember when setting the clocks back was something we looked forward to, not something that meant having to reset your toddler as well). We have a deal with Calvin, which we started last year, that he can trade his candy in for a new toy. He asked for a roundhouse for his train. That's a pretty good deal, if you ask me. And he's still wearing his costume around the house, so that was a pretty good deal as well.

See lots more Halloween pictures in the October 2009, too album.

Honey Pooh, and the cider mill, too