Thankful Thanksgiving

 

Well, now that the food is done, leftovers are almost extinct, and I have awoken from my post-Thanksgiving coma………….

here is my Top 10 List of Reasons I am Thankful this Thanksgiving.

1)  My kids are healthy, Alex is healthy, and I am healthy.  Health is priceless.  It is not something that is just a given, and if it’s important to you, you need to work on it.

2)  My husband has a job.  No matter what the news prints/reports/etc., our economy still sucks and the unemployment rate is still high.  We are very thankful.

3)  Homeschooling, no matter how much I lose my mind over it, is awesome and I am thankful for the ability to educate my girls. 

4)  Running.  Keeps me healthy and reduces my stress.  Of course, that makes everyone else around here happy!

5)  Coffee.  ‘Nuf said.

6)  Growth.  No, not my waistline, but my brain.  If you do the same things all the time and never change and grow, you’re just stagnant.  Stagnant is bad.  Anything worth doing takes effort and time; don’t let time pass you by while you’re being stagnant.

7)  Dairy-free chocolate.  ‘Nuf said again.

8)  Hope.  Yep, that’s what the girls named our van.  Without her, how could we get to all the fun places we go, pick up our groceries, run our errands, and get to the gas station.   

9)  Cooking.  I love to cook.  I love that I know I am feeding my family healthy foods and I love that they like nearly everything I make. 

10)  Last, but certainly not least, my friends.  I am thankful for each and every one of you.  This has been one heck of a year and without you guys I think I would have gone completely insane. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

I hope that everyone is having a wonderful Thanksgiving today.  I’m taking a moment in between rounds of food to post some pictures of our dinner (late lunch?  early dinner?  whatever.)  Soon it will be time for pie!

Except for the cinnamon rolls that I made this morning that had egg in the dough, everything else is totally vegan.  And I must say, it was all (so far – haven’t had those pies!) totally delicious!

The cinnamon rolls were waiting to be iced.

 

Pumpkin pie. 

 

Apple pie before it baked in the oven.

 

After.  What?  You expected some other decorative cutout on my apple pie?!?  For shame!

 

This is a super yummy whipped ‘cream’ that I made with coconut milk, powdered sugar, vanilla extract, and a little bit of cornstarch.  I cannot wait to have this on my pie!!!!!!  (Can you tell I’m really looking forward to those dang pies?!)

Hannah made the table look gorgeous.    Thanks, Hanny!!!

 

She watched a napkin folding video and liked this one. 

 

Someone was just having fun watching her sister do the work. 

 

Time to eat!!! 

The rest of the food was up on the counter. 

I bet you can almost smell this!

Okay, from top left – stuffing with apples, mushrooms, and soy sausage; baked sweet potato; Quorn turk’y roast, roasted carrots and peas, mashed potatoes with no-chicken gravy.  Mmmmmmm……I am stuffed and happy (though still looking forward to, you guessed it, PIE!)

I have more pictures but will put those up later.  Mary got here last night and stayed until she had to leave for work.  I’m glad she got to put the ornaments up on the tree with her sisters.  The girls are happily playing in their room right now, Alex is cleaning up the huge mess I left in the kitchen, and the football game just ended.  Later on we will be watching a movie.  What movie you ask?!?  Did you have to ask?  What else would we watch today?  I’ll give you a hint – let me know if you know what movie it is………

“Grace?  She died 30 years ago!” 

Sometimes you just need a change of scenery.

 

I am fortunate enough to homeschool the girls.  This means we have the freedom to do our school work wherever and whenever we want to.  On Friday I decided that we needed to do our work (why do I say “our work” when it is clearly their work?!) outside.  Now, knowing me, there is only one place for us to do that.

 

   Downtown Disney!  There’s a great little field right by La Nouba that is wonderful for having a picnic, running around, and now, doing schoolwork!  I found these great big clipboards at JoAnn’s (thanks for the idea Patience!) that work wonderfully for stuff like this.

   Hannah was working on a Thanksgiving poem.  Hmmm…..funny how the toys ended up coming with us, isn’t it?!  ;)

 

     Not sure what Kali was doing here.

 

After we were done with math, grammar, writing, lunch, history, and whatever else I brought for them, we put our stuff in the car and decided to walk around for a bit.  Some of the Christmas decorations were up. 

 

I think Hannah was trying to talk to me while I was taking the picture.

 

Someone was being really goofy.

I think she was trying to attack us.

 

Or maybe she thought someone was trying to get her?!  Silly girl.

 

I bet they were saying “hey, lets see if we can ditch mom for a while!”

She wouldn’t tell me.

We had lots of fun, the girls got their daily dose of smarts, and the weather was absolutely wonderful.  We will have to do that again soon. 

 

On Saturday (because I’m too lazy to put this in a separate blog post) I made some veggie ‘fritters’ with carrots, zucchini, sweet potato, russet potato, garlic, and some other various spices tossed with some flour and an egg.  They rocked!  We had these with a huge salad.  Mmmmmmmmmmm.  I want more.

 

Now I’m sitting here while the girls do their math.  I’m trying to figure out when I have to cook certain parts of our Thanksgiving menu.  I think I will make the pie crust dough today and freeze it until I bake the pies on Wednesday. 

Food, food, and more food.

 

We’re on week 4 (I believe) of no meat and no dairy.  My scale is 6 pounds happier at the moment, and I feel fantastic.

So I was thinking of doing something……..I’m thinking of doing a blog project for next year following our food journey.  We’re not vegan, but if I say vegetarian, people think we still eat dairy.  So Hannah came up with Veggan – she said that’s vegan with eggs. 

Tonight we had some yummy salads with all sorts of stuff in it (my favorites were the sunflower seeds and the sundried tomatoes) and some veggie fritters.  The fritters had carrots, zucchini, sweet potato, russet potato, onion, garlic, an egg, and some flour – oh yeah, and salt and pepper, too.  I sprayed some olive oil in my cast iron skillet and made ‘em nice and crispy. 

I’ve got some pictures, so as soon as I feel like plugging my camera into my computer, I’ll put them up here!  I have some great pictures from our fun school day yesterday. 

My morning.

 

I woke up around 3:00 this morning, hopped in the shower, had a cup of coffee, and headed out to Downtown Disney for the United Way benefit sale.  So did many, many, many other people. 

Lines were forming everywhere!  One of the stores had certain Dooney & Bourke bags at 50% off!  I try to be a nice mommy every once in a while, so I waiting at the line by the toy store.  I froze my butt off!  I think it was about 44 degrees in the middle of the night – which was when I was standing in line. 

I got in the toy store when they opened at 5:30.  Thank god for heat!  I did a little shopping, walked over to the back park of the store, and this is who I saw…………..

Yay!  Minnie and Mickey at the toy store!  I was quite the happy camper.

I did my shopping at a few of the stores there, loaded up the van, and headed home.  I’d tell you what I bought, but some certain kids of mine might read this. 

After I got home, I promptly took a nap.  A nice, long, cozy nap.  It was worth getting up at 3am for this and I hope they do it again next year!