So Thankful

This year we are thankful for family and friends, robots, the iron dome, church, temples, teachers, football, live turkeys, pizza, hedgehogs, sweaters, dauntless dive-bombers, the U.S. military, science, music, books, dots, computers, paper, trees, a backyard, Axis and Allies, and time spent together. 

We stayed here for Thanksgiving this year and I loved it.  Having everyone home together with nowhere to go and nothing to do seriously felt like a real vacation to me.  The boys played football all morning and Axis and Allies all afternoon.  They turned our Halloween pumpkins (which we never carved) into turkeys for the occasion and we had a grand Thanksgiving feast with our very best of friends - our family away from family.  The food was fabulous and everyone left very full and happy.  It just doesn't get any better than that.

 Here are the kids ready to feast!

 And the little girls too.

 Mmmm. . . candied coconut yams.  Rolls.  My two favorite Thanksgiving foods.

 My first homemade pumpkin pie.

 Good times. . . the elders were happy to have plates full of food.

 Another three-hour game of Axis and Allies.  These boys could not be happier.

 Isaac wrote a persuasive essay at school about not eating turkey. I must say it's pretty convincing (and hilarious) Here's an excerpt from the third page: "When you eat turkey you are killing a precious cute animal. Do you kill cute animals when you make pizza?  No!  Pizza has cheese! cheese! cheese!  Cheese is so good.  It's stuffed with vitamin A,B,C, and D.  Turkey is bare.  It has no cheese.  It has nothing but cute dead animal and tastes like wet wood.  But pizza is creamy.  Pizza is awesome.  Why don't you try pizza instead for your Thanksgiving feast?  You'll enjoy it, I promise!"

And Brig made this beauty at school.  Not a turkey.  A vulture.  A brown, friendly, happy, clean, soft, and wiggly vulture.  Exactly the way I'd describe a scavenger bird.

  Clayton wrote this nice ode to Nate.  I love it - an interesting thing to write on a turkey, though.

Here are the boys hard at work with their construction paper, stapler, and googly eyes.

 Isaac's turkey is holding a sign in protest.  It says, "Eat Pizza.  Not Turkey."  Brigham says his turkey is named "Cute".  And Clayton's has teeth.  Scary.

"I can no other answer make, but thanks, and thanks, and ever thanks." 

Shakespeare, "Twelfth Night"