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.
