Thanksgiving

November has been a crazy month for us! Parker started the month with a cold which turned into pneumonia and he broke out in a rash all over his face and legs. Once he was on antibiotics he was feeling better almost immediately and the rash cleared up in a few days. Olivia caught the same thing only it went into croup. It was a long week of sleepless nights and worrying. Plus we're still trying to figure out what food allergy she is allergic to since she keeps having reactions to foods we are feeding her.

While this was all happening, Hannah kept complaining about her tooth hurting. I figured she wasn't getting enough attention since I was focusing my time on Parker and Olivia but made an appointment for check-up for early December. Well she started crying one night and said her tooth really hurt so I got her in the next morning and found out the enamel on her back molars didn't develop and she has 3 root canals!!! Poor Hannah. She really was in pain. The dentist said he's seen this before and it's nothing we could have prevented from brushing that it was a developmental thing. He gave her pain medicine and she'll have her dental work done on the 12th.

So needless to say, I wasn't in the mood to fix a huge Thanksgiving dinner and was even considering going out to eat.

However, Parker was really excited for Thanksgiving this year. (I'm sure from learning about it in 1st grade.) So I decided to make dinner and have the kids do all my prep work. They were super excited to help. Russ took care of the turkey. We bought a turkey breast and he barbecued it. I bought rolls and pies which made it simpler too. Anyway it turned out to be fun and relaxing and a lot cheaper than going out.

The picture below shows Parker snipping the ends of the green beans and Hannah chopping the sweet potatoes in the food processor.

A nice cheesy/posed picture just for Russ

Parker had a great idea for placemats from a craft he did at school so we did that while everything was cooking. We took a paper bag and cut it into placemats for everyone. We drew Thanksgiving pictures and said what we like about eachother. Russ, of course, made a mockery of the placemats and drew a picture of me saying "Happy Thanksgiving" that the kids absolutely loved.

Olivia was being a turkey so we let her sleep through our dinner. It wasn't worth the picture to wake her up!

Finished product

The turkey turned out delicious and we'll probably barbecue it again next year! We also did individual servings of stuffing and sweet potato casserole to spice things up a bit and make it more appealing for kids to eat.