Another American Thanksgiving in Canada

 This is the second year that we have actually celebrated American Thanksgiving while living in Canada. For the first few years I thought it felt like too much to do all the cooking for just our small family, but we helped solve that problem by getting rotisserie chickens from Costco rather than making a turkey and the kids enjoy helping in the kitchen with the other things. Our dinner was much simpler than many others, but it was pretty big and special for us. We made it more special by getting out the nice dishes that we rarely use and Heidi really enjoyed setting the table.

Asher and Leif were gone with Austin for the first half of the day running some errands, including getting the chicken and some of the other groceries. The younger three were very excited to help make the pie crust and "pie crust cinnamon sugar bites". (Trevor can't have pumpkin pie because of the milk in it, but he can have crust if I make it with no milk). Natalie made everyone laugh at breakfast when I told them what we were making and she said "I love sugar bites! How come they bite you?"She has so many opinions and funny ideas lately :)

We cut the pie crust into cute little shapes with some fall cookie cutters I got recently and the kids loved rolling out their own dough, although they needed a little help from mom occasionally.

 

The kids were very excited to use candles while we were eating dinner. Soon after I took the picture and once Austin had finished cutting the chicken, we turned the lights out (but left a distant light on) and lit the candles. The kids were also very excited for cranberry gingerale since they very rarely get soda, and especially not at dinner at home. We did the traditional going around to say what we were thankful for and recognized how blessed we are to have such a special family.

The older kids, especially Asher and Leif, were extremely helpful with cleaning up dinner. And to my delight, after dinner was all cleaned up, Asher and Leif took it upon themselves to clean most of the rest of the house, including their playroom downstairs and vacuuming most of the house. I had promised them that they could get out the Christmas stuff the day after Thanksgiving, but the house had to be clean before we got out any more clutter, so they got most of it done so we could start first thing in the morning :)