I'm thankful, even if it IS late...

My life has been crazy these days, in a good sort of way.  I  find that every year I'm busier than the last, which makes me a bit nervous to imagine myself a few years down the road.  Anyhow, I'd love to recap a bit of how my family spent the Thanksgiving holiday.  [I'll try to leave out the parts about the obscene amounts of candy corn I ate.  Seriously, I feel like I'm in detox.  Candy corn is SO addicting!]

Initially, I was interested to do a little Thanksgiving activity at my girls school - like tell the Thanksgiving story, what it means to us personally, do a little craft, bring a treat.  Then my wise husband cautioned me against doing it since I was hosting 30 people for Thanksgiving dinner.  But one day when I went to get the girls from school, Emma's teacher says to me, "We'd love to celebrate Thanksgiving with the kids, but we aren't really sure how to do it.  Would you mind giving us some ideas?"   I just couldn't say no! 

Truthfully, I was excited about hanging out with the little guys, building a bit more rapport with the teachers and hopefully giving myself some street cred so I could come back for a Christmas activity.

So, the night before Thanksgiving, instead of making pumpkin pie, I was cutting out 150 leaves for a craft I would do the next day.  [Our expat family celebrated Thanksgiving on Friday instead of Thursday this year.]  I still have a bruise on my thumb, in case you were wondering.

On Thanksgiving morning, I accompanied my girls to school and stayed in Samantha's class.  The teacher lined up all 35 of her classmates and they sat quietly while she introduced me.  [How does she do that?! I only have four and my house is never EVER quiet!]

I started off by using one of our favorite Thanksgiving books, This is the Feast to tell the general story of thanksgiving.  I made hats for the Indians, a pilgrim dude and a pilgrim mama to help get the kids involved in the story a bit more.  

We talked about how it's easy to be thankful for things when life is good, but it's really hard to be thankful when life is difficult!  I shared with the kids about how the Pilgrims were able to be thankful even though their life was hard.  

Then they had a surprise for me!  They had prepared a Thanksgiving Day dance for me (using a very popular local song), complete with a fabulously decorated Thanksgiving Day bulletin board in the background.  Since there was no assumption that Thanksgiving had anything to do with pumpkins, fall colored leaves, gourds or the "typical" stuff, it had a nice fat heart on it.  Crack me up.  

Samantha was in the back row, but you can't see her well in this picture. 

My little pilgrim boy was inciting the masses during the girls dance.  He was pretty funny!

 I found it interesting that they closed their dance with heads bowed.  It was nice to show them how the Pilgrims used that same posture to show their thanks to God for His provision for them.

 After the dance, all the kids moved to the courtyard with me to make little indian corn crafts.  There was a nice picture of indian corn in our book and I thought would be a cheap and easy craft to do with a billion kids.  Oh wait, not a billion...just 75.  

They all had a really fun time doing the craft!  I'm not sure how much free time they have in school to do extra things like this, but I could tell they really enjoyed it.  

When I was finished with Samantha's class, I walked next door to Emma's class to do pretty much the same thing.  During the craft time, Emma was my good helper!  She passed around glue, the cutout shapes, and showed all her friends the example from the book of the indian corn.  

 Emma's class had also (surprise!) planned a special dance for me.  I did my best to act surprised.  =)  My girl Emma loves dancing time at school!

 I loved how the pilgrim dude and pilgrim mama were standing next to each other while the other kids danced!

Truly, the activity was a huge success!  The kids had a great time, the teachers really enjoyed it as well and it accomplished several purposes for me.  After the activity, I made a beeline for home and started cranking some of the yumminess that would be eaten the next day.  

When the next day arrived, my oven was put to the test in a big way!  I think it was on almost the entire day!  At one point, one of the engineers in the group came in the kitchen and stacked dishes on top of dishes to get more stuff in there.  This photo doesn't do the reality of the situation much justice, but on the bottom layer is Potatoes au Gratin with foil covered mashed potatoes stacked on top of that, followed by herbed corn, with a cookie sheet of crescent rolls stacked on top of that.

 When all was said and done, there was so much food it was a big embarrassing.  There was SO. MUCH. FOOD.  On the other hand, there were a lot of people and the food ended up feeding us the next day while we gathered together to discuss things that needed discussing.  

 I love this picture because it totally describes my life as an expat - all the food is stacked on nine Contico trunks that have carted our worldly belongings from here and there and back again.  It's covered with a plastic tablecloth that was sent with love from my home club, and the banner was made from leftover scrapbook paper that my awesome mother-in-law sent me years ago.  The delicious food was made from ingredients that have been procured, stocked and saved from several bigger cities and countries and nearly everything was made from scratch.  

 And since I'm always afraid there won't be enough desserts, I made sure we wouldn't run dry.  

 Have I mentioned yet about the awesome people at Crosstown?  They sent us four boxes of love, which included almost everything we'd ever need to throw the most awesome Thanksgiving ever.  They sent decorations so that my house might actually feel like a piece of autumn bliss.  They sent crafts for the kids, more crafts for the kids, plates, forks, knives...you name it.  The older kids made these little Reese's  turkeys for everyone who came - too cute, yeah?! Thanks again, crosstown - you totally blessed us this Thanksgiving!

So that was my Thanksgiving.  It was certainly different than holidays past - and yes, I found myself missing my family and my friends that might as well be family - but it was a blessing to be able to serve with those around me this year.  I've also been meditating on good truth from Piper's book, Faith in Future Grace.  Without downplaying the role that gratitude has in our lives, he shows us that looking back in gratitude at God's provision gives us confidence and faith in His power to provide all that we need in the future.  

I can surely agree.  God has been faithful to me in so many ways this year and has provided abundantly for my needs.  With great confidence in Him, I can rest assured that He'll continue doing so in the future!

Happy very late Thanksgiving!