For This, Let Us be Truly Thankful

For the first time in our entire family's existence, we are:

1. Celebrating Thanksgiving.
2. Celebrating together, just us four.
3. Eating at home.

And thus Thanksgiving this year, like everything else in our lives of late, was a true adventure.

It wasn't as elaborate or as long-term as I'd originally planned, in light of our impromptu cross-country road trip, but the girls and I did make the much-desired thankful tree:

 A much-desired and enthusiastically-produced thankful tree, I should say:

Those no-spill paint cups that the girls are using? I've wanted them since the girls were born, I bought them while we were away on our trip, I LOVE them, and I'm going to tell you about them tomorrow.

Some years we eat Thanksgiving dinner with family, some years we go out to eat, one year we ate one of those Stouffer's family-sized lasagnas and then went to a sci-fi convention, but this year we cooked our own Thanksgiving feast. The menu consisted of:

Made-from-Scratch Yeast Rolls

 Honey Butter

Matt's Amazing Entire Turkey

 Including One Turkey Leg for Each Child

 Miso-Roasted Brussels Sprouts and Potatoes

 And, of Course, Two Kinds of Pie

Pie #1, obviously, was pumpkin, baked with my own fresh pumpkin puree. Pie #2 was, briefly, a pumpkin-brownie pie, until Matt opened the refrigerator door with too much emphasis and Pie #2 took a suicidal nose-dive onto the filthy kitchen floor. The little sous chefs and I were very sad, until Matt surprised us with a very non-traditional pumpkin-chocolate pie combination that was so insanely delicious that I'm going to ask him to make it again for me tomorrow so that we can write down the recipe and eat pumpkin-chocolate pie FOREVER!

I Did Mention the Entire Turkey, Yes?

Matt made the entire turkey, since I do not cook meat. I am dang grateful, however, that Matty and the kids have several weeks' worth of lunch meat in the freezer, and I do believe that tomorrow my suggestion that the carcass (ugh!) be boiled into turkey stock will be followed up upon by those who are willing to perform such kitchenly duties.

It was a happy, happy day. Some memories, such as the translation of Willow's thanksgiving leaf (which reads, by the way, "I am thankful that Gracie is purrsy"--ah, invented spelling!), may eventually fade--

-

--but other memories, happily, will be written into Life's Little Recipe Book to keep forever:

 So it's turkey carcass and pumpkin-chocolate pie tomorrow, but tonight, I think we may order pizza.

The Magic Tree House on Our Timeline (Updated August 2022)

Last night, they listened to this book while they fell asleep!

Note: I updated this post in August 2022 to include in my timeline list all the Magic Tree House books that had been published after November 2010. 

Dishes are in the dishwasher, laundry is in the washing machine, dinner is on the stove, one kid is playing LEGOs while the other kid reads on the couch, and the house that Matt painstakingly straightened while we were gone is trashed, trashed, TRASHED.

We must be home again!

We left a few projects in the lurch for our trip--our bat house, the thankful tree, the Disaster Dioramas of Pompeii and the Titanic, a whole slew of Spanish flashcards--and every now and then, as the kids decompress and I continue my manic run through the holiday craft fair season, we're picking them all back up again.

For instance, we finally finished a project that we've been working on for a while--putting all the Magic Tree House books in their proper spot on our huge basement timeline. Because the kids listen to the Magic Tree House audiobooks over and over again, they've gained quite a bit of historical and geographical knowledge, but it can be tough putting that into a wider context, and wider contexts is what I am all about.

So I sent Matt thumbnails of every Magic Tree House book cover for him to lay out and print, and I made a list of where each relevant book belongs on our timeline. Want to see my list? It's pretty great:

• #1 Dinosaur Before Dark--Cretaceous period
• #2 The Knight at Dawn--Middle Ages
• #3 Mummies in the Morning--2630 BCE to 2250 BCE
• #4 Pirates Past Noon--1690-1730
• #5 Night of the Ninjas--1336-1600
• #7 Sunset of the Sabertooth--Late Pleistocene period
• #8 Midnight on the Moon--2036
• #10 Ghost Town at Sundown--1850-1900
• #13 Vacation under the Volcano--79 CE
• #14 Day of the Dragon King--first century
• #15 Viking Ships at Sunrise--9th century
• #16 Hour of the Olympics--776 BCE-393 CE
• #17 Tonight on the Titanic--1912
• #18 Buffalo before Breakfast--1850-1900
• #21 Civil War on Sunday--1861-1865
• #22 Revolutionary War on Wednesday--12/25/1776
• #23 Twister on Tuesday--1870s
• #24 Earthquake in the Early Morning--1906
• #25 Stage Fright on a Summer Night--1558-1603
• #27 Thanksgiving on Thursday--1621
• #28 High Tide in Hawaii--11th century-1777
• #29 A Big Day for Baseball--1947
• #30 Hurricane Heroes in Texas--1930
• #31 Warriors in Winter--100s CE
• #32 To the Future, Ben Franklin!--1787
• #33 Narwhal on a Sunny Night--975-990
• #34 (old numbering--now it's Merlin Mission #6) Season of the Sandstorms--prior to the 8th century
• #34 Late Lunch with Llamas--15th century
• #35 (old numbering--now it's Merlin Mission #7) Night of the New Magicians--1889
• #35 Camp Time in California--1903
• #36 (old numbering--now it's Merlin Mission #8) Blizzard of the Blue Moon--1938
• #37 Dragon of the Red Dawn--1185-1603
• #38 Monday with a Mad Genius--around 1500
• #39 Dark Day in the Deep Sea--1870s
• #41 Moonlight of the Magic Flute--1760
• #42 A Good Night for Ghosts--1916
• #43 Leprechaun in Late Winter--1860
• Merlin Mission #17 A Crazy Day with Cobras--1500-1600
• Merlin Mission #18 Dogs in the Dead of Night--1600s
• Merlin Mission #19 Abe Lincoln at Last--1861
• Merlin Mission #20 A Perfect Time for Pandas--2008
• Merlin Mission #21 Stallion by Starlight--340 BCE
• Merlin Mission #22 Hurry Up, Houdini!--1915
• Merlin Mission #23 High Time for Heroes--1849-1850
• Merlin Mission #24 Soccer on Sunday--1970
• Merlin Mission #25--Shadow of the Shark--before 1511
• Merlin Mission #26 Balto of the Blue Dawn--1925

Some books aren't included in the list because they don't take place in any particular time--wait with bated breath for our big geography project later on. We're also still reading the latest Magic Tree House, the one about Charles Dickens, and then we'll put that one on the timeline, too.

The little kid helped me cut out all the book cover thumbnails, then the big kid glued them onto the wall as I showed her where each one went. She coated each in an extra layer of glitter glue, just because, and then I went back and wrote in the timeline info:

I had no idea, until we actually started placing them, how many books Mary Pope Osborne had set in the latter half of the nineteenth century or so. If we ever move and thus need to do our timeline over again, remind me to set aside more room here just for her.

For a while the kids listened to this book over and over and over again--I think they found the part with the ghost thrilling:

 

I was going to encourage them to listen to Thanksgiving on Thursday, but I don't seem to have ripped the audio copy from a library CD yet. Fortunately, we own a paperback copy of the book, so perhaps we'll find time to read it out loud together today.

Interspersed with making Pilgrim paper dolls and the thankful tree and the dinner roll dough to freeze for Thursday, that is...

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, encounters with Chainsaw Helicopters, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Travel Photojournal: Petrified Forest

At our last major stop of the trip, it's starting to get cold, we're starting to get tired, and oh, look! Is that rain in the distance?

 
 
 
 
 
 
Fortunately, we're still able to end on a high note.

We're taking brief stops to see the sights in Oklahoma City and visit with my folks in Arkansas, but then we're headed home!

Travel Photojournal: Meteor Crater

On the way to the Petrified Forest, we stopped at Meteor Crater:

 
 
 
 
Willow said that the crater wasn't as big as she'd thought it would be. I know that it's not much compared to the Grand Canyon, sure, but goodness! How much bigger do you need a mile-wide meteor crater to be, silly girl?

Next, we drive on to the Petrified Forest.

Travel Photojournal: Lowell Observatory

We walked in the footsteps of astronomers, looked up through the telescope that discovered Pluto, and ran the length of the solar system:

 
Then we bought one pumpkin spice latte and two kiddie hot chocolates and headed back to our cheap motel, where the girls ate cheddar bunnies and journaled about their day:

I thought that this picture was going to turn out to be a drawing of Clyde Tombaugh's Pluto telescope, but nope.

It's our motel room. Again.

Next up, we tromp through the Petrified Forest, taking only pictures, leaving only tromp-marks!

Travel Photojournal: The Grand Canyon

I was worried that the kids wouldn't like the Grand Canyon:

 

  

  

  

  

 

  

They liked it.

Next, we tour Lowell Observatory!

P.S. Want to know more about my adventures in life, and my looming mid-life crisis? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Travel Photojournal: Bakersfield, California, to the Grand Canyon

Southeast through California into Arizona:

There are a lot of windmills.

Next, we see the Grand Canyon!