Thanksgiving bloopers

There were a few funny things that happened around thanksgiving.

First blooper: A couple of days before Thanksgiving, I gave a presentation to Gabe's class all about Thanksgiving. I wrote about it in an earlier post. One thing I didn't mention was my not so PC comment. The kids were getting rowdy so I folded my arms like an Indian and told all the kids to sit down and cross their arms and legs Indian style. It just came out. Apparently, Native Americans took offense at this term and it has been considered politically incorrect for several years. I think the term used now to get kids to sit down cross legged is something like "criss cross applesauce" or something to that effect. I told Chris about my blunder and he said " so I guess criss cross applesauce, please pass the peace pipe, would be out too?" nice. I think the funniest thing about it was, as I was leaving the room, the teacher's aid, who is from the Philippines, yelled out to all the rowdy kids, "come on kids let's all sit Indian style." I looked up and there she was doing her best "Indian style" crossed legs and arms. Great job Ali.

Second blooper: The mother of one of Emily's friends invited our family over on Thanksgiving Thursday evening to have dessert. She knew we weren't celebrating Thanksgiving that day but wanted us to come over for a pre-Thanksgiving desert get together. I was excited to go and offered to bring a Chocolate silk pie. The night of the get together came and we walked over promptly at 7:00.

I walked in and immediately realized I hadn't received the, "wear your little black dress"memo. Everyone was dressed in really nice evening attire. I of course, was wearing a T-shirt and jeans. (the T-shirt had a cute little chocolate stain on it from making the pie earlier in the day) All of the sudden I was also keenly aware that my children were not only severely under dressed, but rather dirty looking. About 2 min before we left, Sara had found a marker and written all over herself. I washed off as much as I could but I had forgotten to wash Anna's face before we left which now had fuzzies stuck to the residue syrup from our pancake dinner. I almost laughed out loud at the scene. Chris was not with us because he was traveling home from a business trip. He ended up making it to the end of the party. He redeemed our family somewhat, looking unshaven but at least nicer dressed. All of my pie got eaten........maybe out of sheer pity. Rest assured next time I get invited to a "get together" I will inquire about the dress code.

Third blooper: We were going to have about 20 people over for Thanksgiving dinner so I bought two turkeys just in case we needed more food. Knowing I wouldn't have enough time to cook two turkeys on that day, I decided to cook one the day before. I timed it just right so I would take the turkey out of the oven before going to pick up the kid's friends who were going to sleep over. They live about an hour away. On our way HOME from picking them up, I realized I had forgotten to take the Turkey out of the oven before we left. I called the Ayi and asked her to take it out of the oven but it was too late. It had already cooked 2 hours longer than it should have. When I got home I opened the foil that was covering the turkey and then tried to carve it. If you've ever seen the movie "Christmas Vacation" you'll be able to picture what happened to the turkey the minute I cut into it. It didn't have the same dramatic split open as in the movie, but it totally fell apart. It was like turkey bones you boil for broth except these turkey bones still had all the meat on them. Once again I had to laugh at myself. Thank heavens it was just a trial run and I still had another turkey for the next day. I figured we could feed the really well done turkey to the kids if we needed to.

So those were my funny Thanksgiving experiences. Next year I'm aiming to watch my mouth, watch my attire, and watch my Turkey!

We had a great Thanksgiving here in China. It wasn't on the traditional Thursday, but rather Saturday because neither the kids nor Chris had time off for the holiday. It worked out just fine though and it turned out to be an awesome day.

The day started out pretty early trying to get 6 kids under the age of 8 out the door by 7:00 a.m. to a baptism (two friends slept over) The place was an hour away so we needed an early start. The baptism service was for two Chinese women, one from Taiwan, and the other from China but married to an American. Chris is the branch mission leader so we attend all the branch baptisms. These women have been investigating the church for a long time and the branch has grown to really love them. Seeing them baptized was a great way to start our Thanksgiving celebration.

We got home at about 11:00 because the traffic coming home was pretty bad. I threw the turkey in the oven and started cooking up a storm. We didn't have any rice (yeah) for our meal, but we did use our rice cooker to keep the yams warm. In my preparations, I had to make some things from scratch, scratch. I usually do homemade sausage stuffing but I couldn't find any sausage. Determined to have my sausage stuffing, I decided to make my own sausage. That's what I call scratch, scratch. I also prepared the traditional Wood family crangrape slush which was a big hit. I couldn't find any ready made crangrape, but mixing cranberry juice and grape juice did the trick.

We invited a few families from our church to come and spend the day with us. In the afternoon the dads took the kids over to the American school to play ball. The day was so fun. We cooked, talked, laughed and ate and ate. We could hardly eat the many pies we prepared.........but we managed to stuff it in.

The memory of that day is something to be very thankful for. We indeed missed our family and our thoughts were with them all day. We feel grateful to have good friends here that help fill that void.