Thankfulness Chain

Every November we try to focus on thankfulness, writing down God's gifts on feathers, leaves, eels, or chains.

This year we went with strips that we stapled into a chain.

We leave a little basket of paper strips on the table and people fill them in on and off all month.  

We have over a hundred links in our chain so far!

 

The Third Random Thing

 

The Glorious Turkey has returned!

Every November, The Glorious Turkey returns from his basement exile to lord it over our table.

You can read more of his history  here.

In the meantime, may the Thanks be with you!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Yes, I know I have my eyes closed, but it was a good picture of our entire family with good lighting and a nice background.  It's only embarrassing because I was the one taking the photo.  Which makes me the world's worst selfie taker.

Thanksgiving Recap

 Actually, we had three Thanksgivings because we have a lot to be thankful for!

The first one was with our cousins, and we just had pizza since we thought people would get tired of turkey if we had it three times in a week.

The second was a traditional dinner with Pop and Bill, the Sunday before Thanksgiving.



The third was up in NJ with my folks and my look alike sister.  No kidding, Choclo told her that it was hard to tell us apart, to which she replied that that was why she wore gray.



A great time was had by all, and much pie was had by all.

And we found three colors of cauliflower, and that was yummy and fun!

And, we brought my sister back with us and are we are having fun with her until she returns to New Mexico in a few days!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Eeling Thankful

 Every November, in preparation for Thanksgiving, we like to write down some of the many things for which we're thankful.

Some years, we've made a big paper turkey and written things down on feathers.

Some years, we wrote things down on links and made a paper chain.


But, this year, we thought we'd try something a little more obviously "Thanksgiving." 

Yes, the pilgrims ate turkey at the first Thanksgiving, but their favorite dish was probably a delicacy in England that also happened to be plentiful in the New World.

Eels!

 So we've been writing our gratitude on eels this month, and taping them at the tops of the walls.

Because, you know, seeing eelings on the ceiling is such a good feeling!

By the way, did you know that baby eels are called elvers?

Elvers are flat and clear and so non-eel like that they were thought to be an unrelated species.

What Are You Thankful For?

Every November we like to write out the things we're thankful for.

This year we started early!  Some time in April, I found a little blank book and used it to start writing down things we were thankful for.

We're currently on number 1085!

And yes, we do read Ann Voscamp!

Still, we wanted to something as a visible reminder of gratitude as we near Thanksgiving.  Usually our book is tucked away on the children's altar in the chapel.

This year we decided to make a paper chain.  Each link is something we are thankful for: from parents to video games, and, as it grows this month, we'll hang it around the living room, reminding us that gratitude is the key to joy!

Happy Thanksgiving!

 Happy Thanksgiving from Zoom!

In Which I Shoot a Turkey

 We had missed Choclo's Tiger Cub visit to Oxon Hill Farm last Sunday, so we decided to go today (the day before Thanksgiving).

The farm has cows, horses, pigs, geese, rabbits, chickens, a cat, and a donkey.  It also plays host to a flock of wild turkeys who like to mooch off the feeding bins!

Yes, I shot my very own turkey with my very own camera on the day before Thanksgiving!  It was thrilling.  For me.

More thrilling for the Zoomlians, they each got to try their hand at milking a (very patient) cow named Minnie.


We took along the Tiger Cubs' mascot, a stuffed tiger named Gilwell.  Each kid gets a turn to take Gilwell home and write his adventures in Gilwell's journal.

We had the whole farm to ourselves, and had a great time poking around in all the outbuildings!

Just Turkeys

Sometime when Mxyl and Klenda were very small, I had the idea of having them do the same craft every year to see how they changed and how their creativity evolved.  That craft was to make a construction paper turkey with feathers (real or paper) and  googly eyes.

This has sort of taken on a life of it's own.

Here are this year's turkeys.

Leena did a Classic Turkey of the type I always have in mind when I drag out the paper.

Zorg has the Conquering Alien Turkey... of Doom!

 Klenda did The Flirty Turkey.


Mxyl did Turkey.

Highlight the empty space after this text if you can't figure it out.
It's the country.

Oob snuck in under the radar and, unbeknownst to me, made a Baby Turkey snuggled up to our big Thankful Turkey.

Choclo, also on his own, made this Video Game Turkey.  He explained, "When he pushes the square button on his chest, he spits out twenty video games!"

Math Turkeys

These addition turkeys were a great idea I got from Royal Baloo.

Her blog looks like a real gold mine of home schooling ideas, definitely worth a look, although her kids are a bit younger than most of mine.

The turkeys say =10 on them, and each feather is a different way to add up to 10.  Choclo loved this craft and, although he knew the answers, having the pattern feathers in order was something he found delightful.

Oob, on the other hand, needed the Math-U-See blocks to see the the pattern, but he also liked the project a lot.  I need to do more crafts like this with them!

Thankfully Before and After

 Thanksgiving is NEXT WEEK?!

Time to get thankful!

So, I made a turkey with the help of Oob.  I had grabbed a roll of builders paper at Home Depot a while ago (near the paint department), and I must say, it's great for craft projects (where you want brown paper), heavy but easy to cut, and super cheap. It's about 3 feet wide and comes in a big roll.

Oob put on the eyes (cross eyed) and gave the turkey buttons.  He also put googly eyes on the wings and a few other random adornments.  He glued a piece of Halloween candy in the turkey's mouth, for example.
 
Still, this was everyone's turkey, not just Oob's, so I felt the need to scale back the surrealism.

We cut out feathers, and let everyone write things they were thankful for on them.  This was last week, and he is still acquiring feathers now and then.

Voila!  A thankful turkey!

Epic Thanksgiving Part 2

 We had a great Thanksgiving dinner with smoked turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberries, salad and... soda!

Soda is a fairly rare treat for the Zoomlians (maybe once or twice a month), but I was still surprised when I found these pictures on the camera.

 Klenda built a domino house, then amused herself (and Leena) by seeing what she could remove.

 Actually, she could remove quite a bit while leaving the structure standing.

 But not that much!

Here's my Dad, looking like he's wondering if someone did something to the soda...

In the back ground, you can see the Emperor reading with Mxyl.  He (and the oldest 3) finished Return of the King, thereby concluding the Tolkien run which began over a year ago with the reading of the Hobbit!

Epic Thanksgiving Part 1

 We went up to visit my folks for Thanksgiving, and we all had a great time!

As you may know, my parents live on a lake.  What you may not know is that the lake is artificial: really, it's a stream that was dammed up sometime in the 50s or 60s.

Surprise!  They are doing major work on the dam and they drained the lake!

Now my parents live on the mud flats!

 

The dam now looks like this (looking down from the road that goes over the dam).  Why the sidewalk looking thing perpendicular to the dam?  I have no idea!

Incidentally, if you're worried about the fish, they scooped them out in buckets.  I wonder if they found the giant snapping turtle I was always afraid would bite my toes off.  We saw it once, it's ragged shell the diameter of a man hole cover.

 The heavy construction equipment was admired by all, as you can imagine.

Besides walking down to the dam, the kids clambered along the rocks on the shore line and returned with heaps of 6 and 7 inch clam shells, some still inhabited.

Giant freshwater clams in Clearview Lake?  Who knew!  And I was worried about the turtle!

At any rate, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to walk out in the middle of the lake and see the stream for myself.

I put on my Dad's rubber boots (3 sizes too large) and came up with a plan: there were large swathes of rocky terrain in the mud flats, and I thought they might be drier, or at least more manageable, than the flat muddy places.  The Emperor solemnly promised that if I fell down, he'd laugh really hard throw me a log, so off I went.

Believe it or not, the "rocky path" idea worked. I sank in to below my ankles, but that was manageable, even with the oversized boots.  I made it to the middle (actually 2/3rds across) and saw the stream.  It was about 3 feet deep and running fast.  I didn't get too close because I saw the tracks of a small duck imprinted about 3 inches into the mud there, and I figured a larger duck would sink more...

I picked up 2 flat rocks (one for my brother, one for my sister) of the kind we used to try to skip out there, and turned back.  A few yards from shore, I saw the big branch my Mom had wanted out of the lake, so I thought I'd take a detour... through the smooth mud...

One boot sank in to mid calf and stuck fast.  One foot stuck, when you're walking in deep mud actually turns out to mean BELLY FLOP!

Naturally, The Emperor on dry land became frantic with worry... about finding the camera.

While I was there, I did get the junk out of the muck, and eventually, me out of the muck, too.

If you're curious, the jacket and jeans survived, the white sweater did not.


After I got cleaned up, we picked up sticks and burned them for a marshmallow and hot dog roast.  Yum!  Yum!