We just hosted Todd's extended family for Thanksgiving this year. It was nice to stay home and be the hosts, even if that meant doing the cooking and cleaning for everyone. Traveling with three kids is infinitely more challenging than cooking a turkey dinner! I also felt blessed to get to eat "my" thanksgiving dinner this year. One of the things that seems hardest when you marry into a new family is adopting someone else's traditions. Everyone celebrates holidays with a bit of a different twist on things and it felt good for one year to eat Grandpa's Sage stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy, and green beans just like when I was a kid.
Of course no good Norwegian family would be without lefse on a big holiday. The annual McLadies (as I have now named them) gathered to make our fresh batches of lefse the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Every year we seem to learn something new and get a little bit better at making lefse. We have decided that lefse is good preparation for the rest of your life. Life Lessons from Lefse we call it. You have to practice patience, precision and a bit more patience when you make lefse the good old fashion way. But the end results are so worth the effort. And all our hard work was enjoyed completely on Thanksgiving Day!
In addition to hosting Todd's family for the big day, we also celebrated Christmas together since we will not all be together again for at least six months. In addition to a brunch and present opening, we attended the Minneapolis Children’s Theater production of A Christmas Story. After the play, we headed to Hell’s Kitchen for dinner (appropriate for a Christmas gathering, don't you think?). I love the place and with a slogan of “Damn Good Food,” how can you go wrong? Well, apparently the ’damn’ didn’t go without notice from the under 12 set (really why do we teach them to read?). I spent the next 48 hours explaining the word ‘damn’ and in the end had to just say ‘it is not a word that 8 year olds use.’ I hope in the end that is a good enough explanation until he is at least 12!
Exhaustion set in when everyone left. Being an extravert, I thrive on having people around all the time. So when they all left, I crashed hard. That is when I found the following note from my Zachary:
Could there be anything better than that? This year, I am not only thankful for my family and the great food we enjoyed together; but, I have the world's best kids to be thankful for as well!
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