Thanksgiving Plans

Erik and I got up at almost 8:00 this morning! Which is sleeping in two hours for me. Nick waited until about 7:30 to get up and even then went back to sleep on the couch. I am letting Xander sleep in this morning. The kids and I have all been under the weather. It has been extremely mild, for which I'm thankful, but both kids have had fevers in the last two days.

Thanksgiving

Our Thanksgiving plans are to have a "feast" with just our family and to watch a couple of movies together. We will finish hanging leaves on our Thankful Tree (writing what we are thankful for on them first) and I hope we will finish coloring our Give Thanks banner from last year. I will polish up our silver (she says optimistically) and make the table look nice. We will ask the kids to use their best manners for the meal. I am looking forward to making the food and spending the time with just my family, but our plans this year certainly remind me of how nice it can be to have many people gathered.

Here's our menu, which I think will be easy if I start today:

• a small turkey, roasted
• cornbread
• mashed potatoes
• from-scratch green bean casserole (recipe from The Pioneer Woman)
• jello salad
• pumpkin pie (I bought the pie crust :) with whipped topping
• Erik's seasoned pecan mix

I may even make a chocolate pudding pie just because we have all the ingredients for it.

Plus crackers and cheese and veggies and dip for appetizers, and organic popcorn with sea salt to go with our movies. We have planned to rent The Sound of Music and Attack of the Clones. Okay, I am the only one who plans to try to find The Sound of Music.

Movies

Speaking of movies, sometime in the next month I want to watch some of my favorite Christmas movies. Along with the classics It's A Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol and A Miracle on 34th Street, there is Elf. I love Elf. It really doesn't even make sense how much I love Elf.

Black Friday

I also plan to try a couple of stores early on Thanksgiving for some necessities that they will have on sale, and one store really early on Black Friday. I've only shopped on Black Friday once before, and it was more lounging at coffee shops and keeping someone else company than shopping. I'm afraid I will regret this decision, but I'm going to try it. We need some clothing and other necessaries that are on sale that day. We won't try to get any of the toys or electronics deals that are so prevalent because we just don't buy much of that stuff. Our toy purchases are highly focused. :)

Traditionally, we also put up our Christmas tree and decorate the house on Thanksgiving weekend. I like the idea of waiting until it's actually December to start the Christmas stuff, but honestly we don't have a lot to do on Thanksgiving weekend so we generally end up wanting to get out the Christmas stuff. Erik will be working a lot, in and out of town, in December, so if we want him involved it will be a good time to decorate.

Sandy

Our guinea pig is acting somewhat strangely. I think he has finally become totally tame with us. Sometimes he wheeks at us because he wants to get out of the cage and hang with us rather than just wanting more food. We had him out on our couch with us yesterday afternoon and he loved it. Every once in a while he would kind of lay down next to us and we would pet him. It was like having a dog! I became concerned that he was sick. But then every once in a while he would walk around exploring and climbing up onto the side table, so I don't think that was it. He was chirping contentedly the whole time.

Illness

Nick has been a little constipated, off and on, for the last few weeks. It surprises me because he is always eating fruit. Last night he had a hard time going to sleep because of it. I will have to be more vigilant about this issue.

I had planned to do school with Xander Monday through Wednesday, but we skipped yesterday due to this mild illness which has struck us. We'll see how today goes.