A Full Thanksgiving Day

We started off our day together with our traditional Thanksgiving Day walk.  This year we went to a local park.  This is how that looked with our Thanksgiving guest Sasha, the beautiful husky mix in the photos. 

 Two leashes are essential since the twins like to be part.

We spent mid-day watching football, cooking and baking, listening to This American Life, and playing chess on the computer.  J helped me create the little paper pumpkins with their place card leaves.  I confess, with recent struggles in and out of the States, it was significantly harder for me to justify fixing a fancy meal this year, so we kept things simple (I thought) and still we had so much.  Humor me while I photograph the menu for future reference.
Turkey (I didn't roast a whole bird this year), family favorite potato rolls with jam, citrus-y green beans with shallots, roasted butternut squash, and mashed potatoes.  No stuffing and no gravy this year--does that make me un-American?  And A says the whipped cream was not to be missed.  I didn't mind eating her pumpkin pie for her.

In lieu of attending the parade in NYC this morning, we decided to record it and watch it after dinner sans chit-chat and commercials--it took us about an hour and ten minutes and the kids danced (and wrestled) to the music.  Finally, tonight we talked about our Christmas theme for this year.  In 2010 we'll be having a "Grateful Christmas".  Can we possibly for our family change the consume-buy-want culture of Christmas that seems to pervade the month of December?  That is the question to be answered in the weeks to come.  More posts to come as we work on it.