Friday, November 25

We celebrated Thanksgiving today. Heavy rain all day long made it easy to stay inside and celebrate. We made room for a whole chicken when we came out to Marulaon, and when it came time to eat our Thanksgiving Chicken, Aaron used our special carving set that was a Christmas present many years ago from his Great Aunt Mary.

I think family and traditions always grow more precious as you get older, and because we are so very isolated from our friends and family, I especially appreciate the memories of those sweet people. Our table was bountifully full with good food in pretty blue bowls given to me by my MIL years ago.

Old handwritten recipes guided us, giving us extra reasons to be grateful for the people who took the time to write down culinary memories. After lunch, the kids took turns whipping the cream to top our pumpkin pie.

It's funny how little things make the day feel "normal". One of our colleague gave us a DVD of an accidentally recorded football game. Not even a whole football game. Just one hour.

But watching that game together while we enjoyed the delicious pie? That is what made the day feel like Thanksgiving!

My favorite part of Thanksgiving is watching our thankful turkey grow. Mr. Turkey is certainly not Pinterest worthy, but he is a simple act of choosing thankfulness, sometimes in difficult situations. We keep the feathers from year to year and look back at preschool handwriting marking the germination of a thankful heart.

Some of my favorite feathers this year: Sonlight (our school curriculum), the "first things" box (when we move, we always have a box that contains the most important things - like toilet paper and food), coconut scrapers, being a 3rd culture kid.