Thanksgiving 2010

Thanksgiving is more of a multi-day series of adventures around here.
To start the festivities off, Sean skips work the day before Thanksgiving to make pies. It lessens my stress, and fills our house with a fantastic aroma. Noel took a great picture of his cherry pie (see below). He also made pumpkin and pecan.



Sylvia and I had put paper-mache over a balloon a few days in advance. Eventually it will turn into a turkey pinata. This is a tradition from my family. It started in the booming town of Weiser Idaho, after celebrating thanksgiving with lots of cousins on my moms side of the family.

Taking a break from pie making, Sean parks himself on the floor of the kitchen and helps Sylvia paint it.

Why can't they they paint on the table? Well, there is a fierce game of Magic going on between the boys and their gaming buddies in the dining room. It makes the day before Thanksgiving loud and festive, with laughter and the smell of fresh pies in the air.


Thanksgiving morning comes, and we watch the Macy's parade while baking dinner rolls, and cooking the turkey. Noel puts the final touches on the pinata with Sylvia, filling it with candy, and making feathers.

Noel is definitely a better turkey artist than I am. We had the most handsome pinata ever. It was sad to see it whacked into shreds within 10 minutes.

Sylvia did a good job setting up the pilgrim scene, to add to the holiday atmosphere.




A trip to the dog park in the brisk freezing cold air, got everyone's appetite up, and mellowed out our dog.


Asher got into a funny stick game with Maya. He had this huge, thick branch and would taunt Maya with it, then run and toss it. She would chase it down, and they would wrestle for control of the stick. It wore them both out. :)



When we got home, we finished dinner preparations, and set the table. After much cracker snatching and munching, we finally got everything onto the table, and all the munchy mouths to smile for a picture.




In the days that follow Thanksgiving, there is much game playing, movie watching, and staying up late. We pull out the Christmas boxes, and turn on the Christmas music.

Sylvia loves listening to our ipod. Her favorites are Mussorgsky and Enya. We decided to load a little Mannheim Steamroller Christmas music onto it for her, and she loved rocking out with Maya today. Maya is very tolerant of Sylvia.





Sylvia was very excited to pull out the Santa Lucia gear out of the Christmas boxes. She put the crown on and stately walked around the dark house. Asher did an amazing job singing "Natten går tunga fjät" in Swedish for her.


Then, Sylvia decided she needed a prince. - And that her prince needed a crown. Sean helped her cut out a paper crown, just the right size for her prince.




Below, we have the handsome prince modeling the latest in prince headgear.




While Sylvia was in princess mode, the kitchen was full of candy elves. Ever since Brooks chocolate party, where Mattias learned the trade secrets of candy making, Mattias has been begging to make all sorts of goodies. Earlier this week he made fudge and carmel, which disappeared with shocking rapidity. Today he wanted to experiment with higher boiling temperatures and go for a hard toffee.


It was a success! Our resident candy maker has done it again! A small ocean of beautiful golden toffee, which cracked into perfect bite sized shapes.




Asher was excited by the possibility of dipping it, and helped with melting some dipping chocolate.


The boys ran into a snag in the production line, when they cooked the chocolate too long and thought they had ruined the whole batch. But with much stirring, and a high stress level, they were able to salvage the chocolate and dip the toffee after all. A near disaster was averted.




It all turned out brilliantly. My favorite comment was from Noel. As I poked my head into the kitchen to make sure nobody was getting scalded or setting the kitchen aflame, I asked "How's it all going?" She slyly grinned and said "Just fine. We are doing just what unschooled children would do. Being creative and learning together. "

(This is a humorous comment if you are in the homeschool world. Unschooling is a much looser type of schooling than we do. Noel has read about it in some of my education books, thought it sounded great, and has been lobbying hard for it.)


Asher and Sean just took bags of the finished chocolates out to some church families they visit. The holiday cheer spreading has begun! Definitely a good Thanksgiving week.

Grandparents tour Madison

We had fun doing several things in Madison while Brad and Liz were here. One that I especially enjoyed was our tour of the Capital. I had heard it was the most beautiful building outside the capital in Wash. D.C., but I thought it was all talk. I have a different opinion now.

The building is full of skylights, gold leafing, and colorful marble.

Many murals adorn the walls. The skylights go through all three floors, filtering in natural light, so it feels open and bright.

We were lucky enough to get in with a tour of Vietnamese judges. It was neat to hear the stories about what the paintings symbolized.

The rock work was amazing. I never knew there were so many different colors of marble.

Another favorite stop in Madison was the zoo. Here is Liz and Mattias with the giraffes.


Here is Brad the zookeeper and his wild animals.

Asher was a sweetie and rode the carousel with Sylvia. He secretly loved it, but as a 12 year old boy, didn't want to look too excited.


Sylvia was in heaven. Carousels are one of her favorite things in the world. We rode the one at the fair this summer 30 times. I was starting to feel sick.


Finally, some pictures for Mattias. These are pictures of a capybara - an animal Mattias is in love with. He wants one for a pet, but being an Amazon rainforest kind of animal, they would not do well in Wisconsin winters. The zoo actually ships them out when the weather gets cold.

They are related to guinea pigs, but are the size of small dogs. Their feet are webbed, like a duck. It is exciting to catch them swimming in their little pond.

Who knows, perhaps in 20 years, Mattias will actually be a capybara breeder, living someplace warmer. The dream all started out at the Madison zoo.

The Pumpkin Patch

One of our favorite things about Wisconsin, is the pumpkin patch concept. Here it is warm enough, long enough, to be able to grow an amazing variety of pumpkins. No more Montana green pumpkins, that you are covering with blankets, the last month before Halloween. Here, we do it in style... with a family annual outing to Hermanson's Pumpkin Patch.

Here is a 402 pound pumpkin. We got smaller ones. :)


Inside one of their barns, they made a haybale maze and decorated it. It was perfect for somebody Sylvia's age. The boys weren't too scared.


We were all able to relax after fighting our way through giggling witches, black cats, and hay bales.



It was fun taking lots of silly pictures. Below you have Asher as a ghost, Myself as a witch, and Sylvia as a cat.

The farm has a nice little area for kids to wander about and pet their animals. Noel's favorite was the donkey.

Sylvia and the boys spent most of their time chasing after a little kitten that was wandering around. The farm owners said that kitten gets more attention than all the other animals combined.

Here is the kitten's mother, on the prowl for dangerous pumpkin snatchers.



There was a wagonload of gourds, so of course the boys would find two that looked like swords, and start hitting each other. I bought a cute little gourd that has dried seeds still in it, so when you shake it, it sounds like a maraca. It sounds great with our drums.



Sean did an outstanding job as pumpkin wagon puller. Sylvia was very attached to the pumpkin she picked out, and it a lot of convincing to get her to set it in the wagon.


Brad and Liz posed for a very cute pumpkin patch picture. It was perfect weather.

The rest of the pictures are of all the various kinds of pumpkins they grow. Pumpkins aren't just orange round things. Brad and Liz recognized some French pumpkins. I like the white ones, and warty ones best.








I took the shot below when Liz and I were trying to be cutting edge photographers. I learned a trick from a newspaper photographer this summer, that to make something look noble and glorious, put your camera on the ground and shoot upwards. This worked well during the Memorial Parade with the boy scouts carrying flags. I'm not so sure that pumpkins lend themselves to "nobleness".

And finally, Sylvia saying goodbye a beautiful wagonload of white pumpkins. Maybe we can sneak back before Halloween and say hello to the kitten. :) I'm sure I'll need to pick up a few pumpkins for pie before the month is out.

Liz's Birthday

On Liz's birthday, we went to a living history site called "Old World Wisconsin" I was surprised at how large the place was. They have over 600 acres of land, with houses and farms built by different nationalities (German, Scandinavian, Polish, etc.) I'm not sure why all my pictures from that have been deleted... I might need to contact Brad about filling in with his pictures.

In the evening, we had a seven course French dinner, and angel food cake. In between courses, we were kept entertained by Sean reading Spam Haiku's off the internet. Such as:

Ears, snouts, and innards,
A homogenous mass
Pass another slice

This set off much laughter and uncontrollable giggling. I think the following pictures still have some of that going on...



Sylvia helped Liz with the candels. Always good to have an experienced 4 year old candle blower sitting by you on your birthday.


Liz and grandkids... We were so glad to get to celebrate her birthday as a family. Too bad Brad's is in Jan. Well, you can always just consider flying out twice a year - we wouldn't mind.

Sylvia picked out a stuffed dog for her pressent to Grandma. She suggested that it should be named "Paws". Sylvia has a stuffed dog named Cocoa, they immediately became friends.
Now Sylvia can call and talk with Paws and Grandma on the phone.

It was a very satisfying day. One of favorites.