Thanksgiving Day

On Thanksgiving day we read a few little stories that were a tradition to read in Michael's family when he was growing up. One is a children's story with pictures about a little boy who was thankful for his favorite whole wheat rolls that his mother made for him. Then there was an article about the history of the Thanksgiving holiday. And the last story was about a group of family and friends who gathered for a Thanksgiving dinner together, and the hostess told about how the Pilgrims on the first Thanksgiving only had 7 kernels of corn each, after storing away the corn that would be needed for planting the next years' crops (I don't know how accurate this part of the story is, but oh well), and so the group of people each had 7 kernels of corn on their plates, and they took turns going around and each telling 7 things they were thankful for.

So, for our tradition, after reading that story we went around and let each of the kids have 7 kernels of corn and tell 7 things they are thankful for. It was pretty cute what kinds of things the boys came up with that they were thankful for. Kolby said some pretty thoughtful things -- that he was thankful that Isaac came home from the hospital, he was thankful for Heavenly Father and the atonement (I didn't know he even knew that word), and he was thankful for his family. I thought that Eli might be too young to understand when we asked him what he was thankful for, and he said that he was thankful for the little plastic bag that we were using to collect each person's kernel of corn, but the next time it was his turn we asked what made him happy and he said temples and churches (I guess he didn't know what the word 'thankful' meant the first time around). So that was a lot of fun.


We had dinner at home as a family, and it was nice because my Grandma was here with us. We were originally planning to invite a few good friends over to have dinner with us (especially since we don't know if we will be moving next summer for Michael's residency, so this may be our last Thanksgiving here in Milwaukee), but when Isaac was born they told us to keep him away from other people, especially little kids, as much as possible, so we decided we would have to do Thanksgiving by ourselves. Then last week I took Isaac into the ENT doctor for his follow-up appointment, and the doctor said that Isaac is fully recovered from the surgeries and we should treat him like any other child his age. So, we will probably try to keep him away from crowded places with lots of little kids for a while longer, but we probably could have had over a few families if we were careful to have people wash their hands before holding him. But it was too late to invite people because everyone had other plans already, but we still had a nice dinner together as a family. I had fun using the table cloth and a pretty candle holder that I had found earlier when we were still planning on having guests over for dinner, and we got out the nice china for the first time in a while (I have been scared to use it with the kids, but none got broken).

Here are pictures of the table all decorated before dinner, and of Daddy and Isaac taking a nap after the meal: