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.