Thanksgiving

I have been waking up quite early recently. I am not happy to be losing sleep but it has been giving me some extra one on one time with Megan. We have been playing dress up and on Wednesday she decided she was a cowboy. She has started to display the girlish love of horses that parallels the gender-ed stereotype of Kiernan's similar big truck obsession at age 2. It seems so strange to me that the kids have displayed so many not particularly trained girl or boy behaviors. 

Thursday morning dawned cold and clear and we double layered the kids and headed out to do a Turkey Trot. It was 24 degrees and even though the atmosphere was festive it was just too cold for the kids. We sent Megan back to the car with Nana. Kiernan ran his 1K and got a medal and froze into a little boy-cicle. I asked him as we walked back to the car if he had fun and he answered enthusiastically yes. I asked him if he wanted to do another one. He said no never again in his whole life. The guy walking next to us laughed and tried to contain himself with a will.

After we warmed up he decided to change his answer to a willingness to run once it is no longer winter.

I made my favorite apple pie. I only make this one for Thanksgiving. It is as close to an actual Pilgrim pie as I can make. It is made with dehydrated apple rings re-hydrated for an hour in apple cider and then heavily spiced.

To stay warm we played a great deal of Mario Kart. We did this last year when it got cold too. Kiernan couldn't really get the hang of driving last year. I have been really enjoying how much he has improved and how much his enjoyment of the game has increased thereby.

We also made a mini ice rink in the kiddie pool. This has been met with joy and confusion in equal measure. I am thinking about adding to the projects list some yard flattening to make a great backyard ice rink. Frederick is just enough north that I think we will have sufficient cold in winter to make it worth while.

We also did the usual indoor play stuff with much bed jumping and hide-and-seeking.

Back to Thanksgiving:

Much of the rest of the day was spent cleaning and cooking and eventually in the eating of vast quantities of food. 

We wrote things that we were thankful for onto the feathers of the paper Turkey the kids made with Nana. Kiernan after some thought said that he was thankful for his sister and Megan after no thought at all said she was thankful for juice.

Ha I love those kids.

Kiernan and Nana had written cards for each of us enumerating the qualities of each of us they were thankful for. It was very sweet.

Aunt Lore joined us and we had a quiet family Thanksgiving. I wish I had been feeling better because the food was really great and I would love to have eaten even more of it. As it was we have had easy and tasty leftovers all weekend.

We spent much of the holiday playing in the cold. 

click to embiggen

We even went to check out our local skating pond. It had only a thin ice sheen and hopefully in a few weeks we will be able to go skate around one it. As it was we got the playground  all to ourselves.

We colored with our home made crayons and Kiernan did some 'homework' in his workbook.

Also we have started the annual Kuehnert gingerbread house.