Yes, this post is a bit late but not as late as you may think (and you may have already noticed that I have a bit of a problem sticking to schedules - but I am working on it, honest). We live overseas and Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated here. That has never bothered me much, we just went ahead and had our turkey anyway. However, this year I am attending classes and I didn’t feel quite justified in skipping class to stay home and stuff the turkey. Luckily, I also realized that trying to prepare a full Thanksgiving dinner after getting home at 2pm with two tired and cranky kids might not be the best way to celebrate a day of thanksgiving.

Therefore, I just decided to postpone Thanksgiving a little bit and we celebrated it today, on Sunday. And let’s just say that was a wise choice as it was still stressful enough. Not horribly, need-to-complain-about-it stressful but just enough to realize that it would have been a disaster in the middle of the work-week.

Today went fine though and I was very happy with the meal (the kids less so as you’ll see in a minute). We had turkey (obviously), stuffing (I LOVE the plain old bread stuffing), gravy (which the kids thought rather gross but I thought was fine), cranberry sauce (which at least B. really liked), sweet n sour beans (which I love and the boys at least tolerate), Pioneer Woman’s mashed potatoes (which even J. declared “better than I expected”), creamy corn (love it because it is the easiest dish ever) and marinated carrots (I like them, nobody else does). I also made some pecan pie but we haven’t tasted it yet because we were too full.

J. was really a great helper with the cooking. You know how they always tell you to get kids involved in cooking in order to get them to enjoy new foods? Not true in our case. J. basically didn’t eat anything (maybe a spoonful of cranberry sauce?). B. ate loads of cranberry sauce and a little bit of the other sides. However, he announced he wouldn’t touch any turkey (I think it finally dawned on him that meat comes from animals). He said “turkeys don’t like Thanksgiving” which is probably true enough. J. didn’t say anything but I noticed that he didn’t touch his meat at all (not surprising then that I buy the smallest turkey I can find).

As you can imagine we have lots of leftovers. Still, the food turned out well, even the turkey (last year I overcooked the bird till it was dry as dust - yes, I am paranoid in regard to food poisining) and I didn’t stress too much.

Grandpa took the boys on a small outing in the afternoon which left me enough peace and quiet to think about the meaning of the holiday. And you know what? Maybe to an outsider my life doesn’t seem exactly charmed but all in all I feel truly blessed. There is so much I can be thankful for and very little I would like to change (okay, I wouldn’t mind winning the lottery). Healthy, happy kids, a fairly comfortable home, friends and plenty of interests. What more could you want?