Happy Thanksgiving!

From our family to yours.

I'm dreaming of... Thanksgiving first.

I love Christmas; I do believe it is my favorite holiday, although I really just love this entire festive season, and that is why I dream of a day when each holiday will be given its due. Unfortunately, Thanksgiving is like the forgotten middle child; stuck between its better known siblings – Halloween and Christmas – it has to be content with hand-me-downs from the former while being quickly edged out of the spotlight by the latter. And this year it looks as though Thanksgiving could be forgotten altogether; with the economy lagging, stores everywhere have cut right to the chase and are advertising "Black Friday prices" for this weekend; some radio stations are already playing all Christmas all the time (let's do the math - are there even that many Christmas songs?); and at least five of our neighbors put up their decorations the weekend after Halloween, including their indoor trees.  I'm all for Christmas, but please, we need to strive for holiday equality.  Don't let Thanksgiving down.

There's no sugar in wooden eggs

Halloween, that sugar laden pinnacle of the child's fall calendar, has come and gone, blessed by the orange rays of a miraculously warm fall sun. We're holiday fans here, and Halloween is no exception, so after breakfast we packed up and headed into Ann Arbor for the costume parade and trick-or-treating along Main Street.  Calvin chose his own costume this year (from an array of offered ideas, of course), opting to be a scarecrow - the easiest (and cheapest) home cooked costume ever: I got a number of fabric swatches from my godmother, Lonnie, and used thick thread and large stitches to put patches on a $2 resale shirt; for his head, a $1 straw hat to which I added ribbon from my craft collection and a couple of additional patches; and for the icing on the costume cake I added handfuls of straw (from the farm down the road) to his sleeves and hat. He was pretty excited about the costume, and everyone else seemed to enjoy it, but he was nervous about approaching strangers to say trick-or-treat.  The candy collecting process, however, was a big hit. In fact, having made rounds in both Ann Arbor and later in our own neighborhood, he came away with copious amounts of candy, none of which we thought he needed to eat. In the end we made a deal with him and he traded in all of the candy he collected (which we promptly passed back out to kids at our own door) for the opportunity to pick out a new toy. Therefore, today, instead of a sugar rush, he has a brand new carton of wooden eggs for his kitchen, with which he is at least equally as happy (the toy lasts longer anyhow) and we are much happier.  I think next year we will be the dreaded house in the neighborhood that passes out raisins.

More pictures in the Halloween 2008 album.

It's October 31st...

Pumpkin guts

It took until this afternoon to realize that the time left before Halloween was really waning (I have yet to finish sewing Calvin's costume), so we made tonight pumpkin carving night.  There's not a whole lot to say about the occassion;  Calvin was not nearly as fascinated as he was last year, although he did thoroughly enjoy the activity and even, at one point, tried to eat the guts (the kid's reasoning is sound - we've been telling him for weeks now that pumpkins are, in fact, a kind of squash).  And individuality is starting to make a play so that when we wanted to carve the small pumpkin (universally known in our family as Calvin's pumpkin) to look like a cat he made it painfully clear that it should be carved as a funny face.  No problem.  And since our text and our pictures are spacially disparate, we bring you part two of our once yearly Halloween educational series (for part one, a look at Halloween's roots, click here), a look at the origin of pumpkins.  Yes, the pumpkin you just carved probably came from the farm down the road, but from where did we get this odd tradition?  As with Halloween's origins, we have the Irish to thank.  During their festival of Samhain (pronounced SAW in) they believed that the barrier between the dead and living worlds was blurred.  They also believed that light kept the evil spirits at bay and hallowed out their harvested turnips to make lanterns.  Later, after the festival was adopted by the Christians and the tradition brought to America by the tides of immigration, the vegetable of choice became the more easily acquired pumpkin.  The Irish also gave the carved vegetable a separate name - the Jack-o-lantern.  As with our bit last year, this is a major over-simplification of the facts, but to honor the roots of this festive activity we precede our carving artistry with hearty servings of Irish Boiled Dinner.  Maybe next year we'll cap the evening with a jig.

For more pictures visit the new Halloween 2008 photo album.