Sunday, 2 December 2007

Thankful

I am so thankful that I have a wonderful family and many wonderful friends. Though sometimes I take it all for granted.

Yesterday was a day to remember how thankful I am . We celebrated American Thanksgiving, a week late, but that was OK. I tried out some American recipes with NZ ingredients and this year they worked. Last year we had some very interesting American dishes. But thanks to some new ingredients in town some worked well.

Our menu:

Snacks:
Nacho chips and guacamole
Chips and kiwi dip.

Main:
Chicken (mainly because I couldn't bring myself to pay $45 for a turkey!)
Dressing. AKA stuffing, but when done out of the bird it is dressing. Glen is vegetarian so we tried to do everything other than the meat so that he could eat it.
Sweet potato casserole. This very sweet dish has a crunchy sugar and pecan crust on top.
Bean casserole. This dish last year was very weird but this year I found dried fried onions and it worked!
Roast potatoes (for Tobyn)
Mashed potatoes.
Carrots.
Green salad.

I did the carrots and roast pots because I knew Tobyn wouldn't eat any of the other veges.

Dessert:
Pecan Pie
Apple Pie
Cream
Ice cream

Notice no pumpkin pie? Amazingly there wasn't anyone American or not that likes pumpkin pie, so why bother?

We had a lovely time with our friends. Of course I was so busy I didn't get very many photos!
The girls are 5 and 3 and they get on so well with our boys. Sophia and Tobyn just disappeared off and quietly played together. It was so nice having a quiet placid little girl around. it makes a huge difference to the normal rowdy boys. Isaac and Vivi are partners in crime. They are very close but because they are both extremely mischievous they do get into trouble together. Nothing really bad but oh so cute!!!

A lead in to some of the happenings of the day. We don't have a front fence. We have been waiting for the landscaper to bring the digger and make the paths down our hill. He said he would do it back in June!!! And he doesn't want us to put fences up until he has done it. So we have had temporary plastic fences on the deck. Fortunately we have a pretty big deck but it does prevent Isaac from going down into the grass. So Steve decided he would put up temporary fences elsewhere to allow the kids to have access to the grass. All good in principle. But Isaac wasn't used to the freedom Iguess. This leads me into a few 'events' of the afternoon.

1. Isaac got under the deck and couldn't get out easily. I think he followed the cat, but then he said 'it's wet' it took lots of coaxing and a chippie to get him out. Steve wasn't going under, he did that last week when he lost some washers under there and he doesn't fancy going under ever again.

2. I was in the kitchen and I heard a few yells from the adults in the lounge. Then I heard a splat and Isaac crying. I ran to see Isaac sprawled on the ground with his ride on on top of him. He had gone off the steps. One of my biggest fears when Steve removed the fencing from the deck. Thankfully Isaac is a tough cookie. He has grazes on his head and a bruise is coming out but he is OK!

3. While whipping the cream to go with the dessert my magic bullet came to pieces! Cream EVERYWHERE!!! And because I do it in the cupboard I had to take everything out from the shelf and ones under it, ARGH.

4. We found this site in the bathroom when we couldn't find the little people. They were in the shower together and Vivi had made herself a little chair, or throne as Kaila said, out of handtowels.



Isaac was sitting down next to Vivi when we found them. It was so cute.

Unfortunately Kaila dna Glen and the family are moving to Auckland in February. We will miss them so much. But we wish them all the best for there big move. I said to Kaila, next year we will have to find another American family to celebrate Thanksgiving with and she said, we will have to meet in Taupo and celebrate there. What a brilliant idea. I had told her we could meet at Steve's families lake house from time to time, but what a perfect plan!

OK off for a busy day now, Church kids service practice, Steve's work kids party, and Steve is taking Tobyn and a friend to a magic show this evening.

ciao for now

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

what a wonderful day you all had. Oh dear at the events in the afternoon, I have to say I did giggle at the cream, Ths kids in the shower were cute. Ouch at the falls Isaac had. I have to say that menu sounded great.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a really great celebration (yes, even the antics of the littlies ... kind of cute, really!) hehe :-)

Oh, and would you be willing to post the recipe for that sweet potato casserole?? It sounds DIVINE!!

Trina said...

Sounds wonderful. I really like the idea of thanksgiving.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a wonderful day. The playing in the shower must be a toddler thing as David has just started doing it as well! He heans up against the glass wall and blows rasberries at us!

Anonymous said...

Oh this sounded like a fun day with lots of yummy food! Sorry but I had to chuckle about the cream explosion in the cupboard. Great LO in prior post btw.

Lisbet said...

Weekend, and the second week into the christmascelebrations. I hope everything is great – I`ve just survival a cold. I thought I should make an inspirationsround before I go home from work.

Have a nice weekend.