Lots to Be Thankful For

Hooray, hooray, it's Thanksgiving Day!  We Hendricksons have a lot to be thankful for this year.  We're all healthy, Daddy successfully defended his dissertation this month, and he has accepted a great job at Northrop Grumman which we're all excited about.

At my parents' home today there were a lot of chefs in the kitchen, as Mother would say.  While I love to cook new recipes, I find it very comforting to see the same family Thanksgiving standbys year after year: turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, corn, Mom's Fall Salad, rolls, and strawberry jam.  Dessert is usually a few kinds of pie, but this year we had apple crisp, pumpkin pie bites, chocolate sheet cake (because this morning Joy begged me to let her bake something to contribute), and a box of assorted See's Candy ('cuz you gotta take your vitamin See's regularly).  The apple crisp and See's were my favorites--I must remember that for next year.

Uncle Nile brought the turkey this year, and did a good job preparing it.  If you've ever tried to cook turkey, you know that it feels like a small miracle if the bird turns out well.

While most of the adults were bustling around the kitchen, Papa opened a marble track set to keep the kids occupied.  The original plan was to let the kids unleash their creativity and design their own track, but Papa couldn't resist adding a few ideas of his own.  After all, papas are really big kids at heart, right?

Anna also played Dinosaur Legos with Cousin Ethan.  The game basically involved the allosaurus repeatedly attacking the Lego people, who fled for their lives.  The Lego people always escaped, for which I was grateful (being a fellow non-reptilian biped, after all), but I confess I feel some sympathy for the dinosaur.  What a bummer to go hungry on Thanksgiving Day.  Perhaps we should have offered him some turkey.