Thanksgiving is About More Than Just Eating

My girls helped a lot with the cooking and preparing. Fiona helped cook because she wants to be a chef some day.

Anna stirs the gravy.

Abby got to eat first. Call it a peace offering.

Emma is a two-fisted eater.

Fiona’s happiest when she’s eating. Maybe that’s why she wants to be a chef!

Anna and Morgan dig in.

Kelsey’s plate is loaded!

The twins and Emma had their own little table.

Lots of compliments and sighs of contentment were heard at the table. The twins helped make the place cards so that we would all know where to sit this year. That actually did help!

Patrick and Morgan were happy to be seated close to the turkey.

I do love my own cooking. Every Thanksgiving I find out what a good cook I am! Shawn likes my cooking, too. He told me numerous times during our feast! What a great son!

Great shot of Patrick

The clean-up crew

Emma and Fiona make “turkey cookies”

We used holiday Fudge Stripe cookies this year, so our turkeys had red and brown tail feathers!

Kelsey and Fiona love making turkey cookies! They’re finger-lickin’ good!

The turkeys get more creative every year!

Fiona put a hat on one of her turkeys and called it a gardener.

I had to get in on the turkey act.

We watched “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” – family tradition, you know. There are important lessons taught in this movie. That’s where I got the title for this post!

Then I let it keep running and a movie I’ve never seen before came on. It was called “It’s America, Charlie Brown – The Voyage of the Mayflower”. We were watching it on Hulu, and that was what came on right after the traditional Peanuts special. It was wonderful. It gave a lot of history of the hardships the Pilgrims faced on the Mayflower and in America after they arrived. It was a great review for my kids, and it really held their attention. I can’t believe I never knew about this show!

Of course, we had to have popcorn while we watched movies. The littlest one requested it. And it made our Thanksgiving celebration more authentic!

The Peanuts gang played the Pilgrim children. I was amazed at how much information they gave in an enjoyable way.

Here’s the video of “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” and “It’s America, Charlie Brown – The Voyage of the Mayflower” for your viewing pleasure!

I thought the day was about over, and all the educational value had been squeezed out of our activities. But, lo and behold, Fiona came to me and handed me two papers for me and Daddy. One was about the Pilgrims and the other about the Indians. She drew adorable pictures of the Pilgrims on the Mayflower and the Indians with a turtle that put a leaf on its head so that it looked like it was wearing a feather. Even the sun had a feather headband. I was really pleased with her creativity and initiative.

She folded her paper up like an envelope and drew pictures on the outside. This is how the Indian picture looked when she brought it to me. She took these pictures herself with my camera.

These are the two envelopes with the Pilgrim and Indian pictures drawn inside of them. I think these were brilliant. And she’s not afraid to try new things. She learned a little about using my camera, too.

Today was a great culmination of our unit study about Thanksgiving and the Pilgrims. I didn’t really plan any school type stuff today. It just happened!

I have so much to be thankful for. Thank You, Lord, for a wonderful family and a wonderful day with them today.

Pennsylvania, Here We Come! We Are Thankful

After all of the months of waiting and packing and praying, we finally have a destination. We found out today that Gary has been hired by a company in York, PA. He will start work on Dec. 6. So now I have less than two weeks to get us really packed and find a new house for us and make all the plans for a move to Pennsylvania.

I had a feeling that God was stressing Thanksgiving for more than one reason. Yes, He did want me to not be anxious and to make my requests with “thanksgiving”, but I believe He was also giving me a clue that we would find out about our new assignment around Thanksgiving – the day before, to be precise!

Our children had been praying, and they heard the Lord say “three weeks”. Yesterday that three week period ended.

So we have even more to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. A better job, a new place, our next assignment, excitement and hope for a better life.

Again I say “HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!”

Thanks and Giving Trees

We made a lapbook called A Season for Giving Thanks by Pleasant Ridge Publishing for Thanksgiving last year. The twins and our neighbor’s daughter did it.

I finally thought of a good cover for it today! I used our extra copies of the Thanks and Giving Trees that we used for Thanksgiving 2 years ago. I put the Thanks tree on the front cover and the Giving tree on the back cover. Each of the kids named something they’re thankful for and put a leaf on the Thanks tree. Then they told us something they did that was helpful and put a leaf on the Giving tree. I got these printables from: http://chocolateonmycranium.blogspot.com/search?q=thanksgiving+tree

As I went through the lapbook with Garrett today, he knew all the answers.

You can see both the front and back cover at the same time here. This way it reads “Giving Thanks”.

The booklets give younger children a good introduction to the main themes of the Pilgrims and the Indians and the First Thanksgiving.

Front cover of Thanksgiving lapbook

Back cover of lapbook

We also played this game. We had to answer questions to go from England to America on the Mayflower. I think I got it from In the Hands of a Child in their free stuff.

We study about the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving every Thanksgiving, and we always manage to learn new things. There are lots of different ideas about how Thanksgiving actually started in our country. But it always comes down to being thankful for our blessings and directing our gratitude to the One who made us.

No matter what situation you are in this season, remember that God is in control. He is our loving, heavenly Father who takes good care of his children. He has good plans for you. He will bless you to be a blessing. Waiting for His promises can seem endless, but He really does take you to the other side of the lake, and there will be an end to the storm. Trust Him and with faith and patience inherit the promises.

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.

Happy Thanksgiving!   from the Douglas family

“Hand”-some Turkeys for Thanksgiving

We unpacked our paints that have been packed up for 3 months so that we could paint hand turkeys.  We didn’t have any brown, so we had to mix colors to make our own brown.  We mixed blue and orange, and that made a nice brown for Kelsey.  Anna used those same colors, but she was not happy with the color she got, as you can tell by the look on her face!

Anna painted Emma’s palm and thumb brown and then each finger a pretty, bright color that she chose.

Here’s Anna still trying to make a brown that she could stand.  She added a little bit of this, a little bit of that, but I don’t think she was ever really satisfied with her brown.

Garrett was fascinated with the paint mixing.

I didn’t get any pictures of printing with their painted hands, because, as you can imagine with a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old, I was hopping to try to keep painted fingers off of things they shouldn’t touch.  Abby’s dress suffered lots of damage.  I finally had to take it off of her.  She kept wiping her hands on it!

After they finished their turkeys, I let them use the rest of the paint to draw whatever they wanted.  They love doing that!

I read them a Thanksgiving story while they painted.  It was called Mary’s First Thanksgiving by Kathy-Jo Wargin, illustrated by Robert Papp.  The subtitle is “An Inspirational Story of Gratefulness”.  It tells about a young immigrant girl from Ireland.  She is sad because the other children at school talk about the big Thanksgiving meals that their families are planning.  Her family will only have their regular food plus maybe an extra loaf of bread with some honey and a few sausages.

Her parents discover that she is feeling that way and they tell her about the difficult years that the Pilgrims endured and how they had to survive on clams, fish and ground nuts, and a few grains of corn during several winters.

After things got better, they still put five grains of corn on their plates at each year’s celebration to remind them of their hardships and five blessings.  To find out what those blessings were and to discover what Mary’s family’s blessings were, you should check out this book.

Fiona poses next to her pictures of a turkey and a mouse.  We used to have a mouse in our garage.

Aren’t these some “Hand”-some turkeys???