Plenty

I should have spent the day before Thanksgiving making FoodFoodFood, but instead I spent the whole day turning a battlefield (i.e. the upstairs) into a living space.  That night, I enjoyed not having to use a hatchet to clear a walkway into my bedroom, but the cost of that small luxury was having to cram all the baking (except the pumpkin cake roll) into a flurried Thanksgiving morning.






Turkey, gravy, stuffing, rolls, pies, candied squash, mashed potatoes, green beans, punch, cranberry salad, quick breads...

It's a good thing I have a houseful of Helper Elves, huh?  (The girls kept audibly sighing for Dobby or Kreacher, but, really, I think they're just fine on their own.)

 Annika made dough and then turned them into pumpkin rolls with a few, well-placed snips.





Ezekiel stole as much dough as he could manage.  (Yes, that's a raw turkey right in the middle of it all.  Salmonella, ho!)






Susannah made Cranberry Waldorf Salad.






Pip and Luci helped me turn the leftover pie crust into cinnamon sugar strips for a snack (okay, we were so busy this was actually all we ate for breakfast-- with milk to balance all our nutrients).












Annie finished off the pumpkin rolls with melted butter

and with pecan stems sent all the way from Texas.  (Those pecans were HUGE and delicious, Molly!)







Millie did a million undocumented things and made place cards, a necessary task...






because our guests were arriving!  Home, food, folks, everything we need in abundance and so much more.  I played Dylan's album New Morning all morning, to Millie's dismay, but his song "Father of Night" is one I always like to listen to on Thanksgiving.

Here you go.

Father of night, Father of day,
Father, who taketh the darkness away,
Father, who teacheth the birds to fly,
Builder of rainbows up in the sky,
Father of loneliness and pain,
Father of love and Father of rain.

Father of day, Father of night,
Father of black, Father of white,
Father, who built the mountains so high,
Who shapeth the cloud there up in the sky,
Father of time and Father of dreams,
Father who turneth the rivers and streams.

Father of grain, Father of wheat,
Father of cold and Father of heat,
Father of air and Father of trees,
Who dwells in our hearts and our memories,
Father of minutes, Father of days,
Father of whom we most solemnly praise.






(Luke:  to distract from your surprised face above, I give this goofy show-off.)







Speaking of goofy, in the next room over...





I may have ulterior motives for wanting Luke and Jae-Ryong at our gatherings.  This time, they brought savory Korean dumplings and the King's Dessert.  It's a most unusual and delicious candy made of thousands of honey strands wrapped around a sweet sesame filling.  Jae-Ryong showed us a video of a Korean man making some (fyi: he drops an "Omg" toward the end, but it's a cool video).











Three cheers for these two!






(Luke:  to make up for your goofy expression above, here's a picture Luci took of you looking cool in the corner chair.)






The following pictures were also taken by one of the girls.  I was reminded of how much I hate the flash of cameras as they walked around blinding all of us. (Plus, the flash really highlights all the fingerprints on our windows.)

The downside of no flash is a blurry snapshot, and here's one of the lovely Jae-Ryong giving the girls a violin lesson.






The End.