The food we celebrate

What is Thanksgiving if not a holiday about food?  Sure, we know it's about giving thanks for those things which we cherish in our lives, but food on the table and good company is a really good place to start.  In our house Thanksgiving is also a sort of kick-off day of preparing our home and our lives for the upcoming season of advent.  So first thing in the morning, while enjoying a yummy family breakfast, we bring all the Christmas decorations out of storage and begin the job of dressing the house for the season.  It's a tad early this year (we won't have a tree until next weekend) but Calvin greatly enjoyed removing each and every seasonal trimming, twice finding himself stuck head first in one Christmas bin or another (be sure to note the santa hat).  Which brings us to the great food and company that we celebrated later in the day, where Calvin enjoyed being the center of a universe that consisted entirely of his devoted followers:  two grandmothers, two grandfathers, an aunt, and an uncle.  Oh, and two parents, too, of course.  Calvin took this celebration of food and thanks to a whole new level with his grandmothers:  he continually conned his gram into giving him snacks from the kitchen, and his grandma brought him the most brilliant set of wooden food we've ever seen, complete with stylish cutting board and knife (it's needed to cut apart the slices of healthy food that are velcroed together), which kept the entire household entertained the whole evening (whether because of the toy or the Calvin, we can't say). 

Pictures, for which are thankful, are in the Nov 17-23 album.

Happy Thanksgiving

We give thanks for our home.  We give thanks for the food we are able to decorate our table with at every meal.  We are thankful for Jon's job, and for the little terror that gives Cortney a job, and Calvin is thankful for the pets and the toys that keep him equally as busy.  We are thankful for our health, and the health of our little boy.  We are thankful for each other, and for our families who will be gathering tonight for a thanks giving dinner.

We wish all of you a beautiful Thanksgiving filled with many things for which to be thankful. 

For every season...

...there's a time, and today was fall's day.  After several cold and windy days today's temperatures reached into the lower 60s and we opened our doors and windows to let in a little sunshine and air.  We also played outside for the first time in what seems like an eternity.  With only three small trees in our yard there's not much raking to do, but in order to have a pile of leaves to jump in one must first rake the leaves into a pile, and so that's what we did.  Calvin liked the raking, he liked the leaves, and he liked the "mess" he was allowed to make with the leaves.  The best part of the Calvin's first foray into this traditional fall activity was the long afternoon nap he took after exhausting himself while frolicking in said leaves.  Now that's fun all around.

Pictures can be found, by those who choose to seek them, in the Nov 10-16 album.

When is a chore not really a chore?

When it's a fun, of course.  We've started including Calvin in several chores around the house:  aside from picking up his toys he also helps us load the dryer, carry dirty clothing to the laundry room, and unload the dishwasher, among other things.  We're not fooling ourselves here - we know this will only last until he realizes that these things are "chores," but we figured it couldn't hurt to introduce the idea of helping early.  His favorite chore, though, is one that he just picked up on his own - feeding the dogs.  At the mere mention of feeding time he dutifully picks up Moose's mini-dog dish, trots over to the garage door for one of us to fill it, then marches right back and plops it down, after which he invariably seems to get disappointed that the dog is eating his hard work.  We enjoy it every time.

And once again...

Final score:  Michigan 28, Michigan State 24

Had O.J. Simpson possessed any wit back in 1994 he would have fled straight to Lansing to hide.  After all, that's the last place anyone would look for a Heisman Trophy winner.