Thanksgiving feast

Our last two Thanksgiving Days have been spent at home, just us, but this year we were invited to join friends.  We sat down late in the afternoon at a table groaning with food and enjoyed getting to know the other guests of our hostess.  There were as many kids as adults, so it was quite a raucous crowd, and all the jollier for that.  There were eighteen of us altogether.

When they'd finished eating the children disappeared down into the basement and played noisy computer games.  But later they re-emerged for an all-hands game of Apples to Apples - a great way to round off the evening before people started heading home.

Earlier in the day the Man and I had managed to sneak out for a quick, cold hike at Five Rivers.  It definitely feels like it won't be long before we have snow, and we're looking forward to it.  But no snow tomorrow, please...

(Un)packed day

It's been a packed, and an unpacking, day.

I was up early mixing shortbread dough, before delivering the Man to work.  Then I just had time to zoom some paperwork over to Five Rivers before I had to nag the kids into the car and take them out for a baking session with the 4H-ers.  Lots of floury fun, making pumpkin bread, biscuits (which here are like scones) and apple pies and, of course, rolling out shortbread.

The children settled down to afternoon activities at separate locations, and I spent the next four hours helping to set up the fair trade market.  Wow!  So many little boxes to open and little treasures to set out!  There were plenty of volunteers, but we still had to work flat out.  I have to say though, the table displays all looked great by the time we were done. 


The church hall doors are all securely locked now until Friday, when we'll be over there bright and early to open up again.  Meanwhile, tomorrow will be a day of Thanksgiving.  For readers celebrating this holiday, we wish you a wonderful day.  For those of you who won't be - well, no harm in giving a little thanks anyway:  life is full of good things.

Tops Gere

I spent the morning delving through five big boxes and inventorising (is that a word?) $4,000-worth of fair trade crafts.  Tomorrow we'll be setting everything out on display, which should be fun.

It's a week (because of Thanksgiving) when the kids only have two days of school, so they've already got that Friday feeling even though it's only Tuesday.  It's going to be a heck of a long weekend.

If they ever decide to go to bed tonight I'm looking forward to curling up and watching the rest of Shall We Dance? which the Man and I have out on DVD from the library.  A very sweet film:  happily married but bored-at-work man has mid-life crisis and takes up ballroom dancing.  If it sounds like your cup of tea (go on, surprise yourself), be sure to get hold of the Japanese original version, not the American re-make.  Though it may sound like hard work, it's worth it for the lovely Japanese cast, and anyway who really wants to watch Richard Gere waltzing?

Fair-minded

It's going to be a very fair trade-focused week for me.  I'm helping organise a big market to be held this Friday and Saturday, and we're deep in preparations. 

Between now and then there's also Thanksgiving, and in fact our date choice for the market was quite calculated in that respect.  For one thing, the popular church hall we're using is empty for the week, which gives us the chance to set everything up in advance.  And for another, Friday is Black Friday, the biggest shopping day in the USA.  We're aiming to give people the chance to "shop with a difference" this year - or at the very least come and buy some beautiful fairly traded handicrafts later in the day after they've snagged that bargain flat-screen telly at four in the morning.

So, a meeting first thing with my fellow organisers, and computer work this afternoon sending out final press releases and what-have-you.  Then when the kids got home from school I sent them back out on their scooters to leaflet the neighbourhood.  As ever they baulked at the very idea of "work", but had a grand time when they got down to it. 

You just can't use enough child labour when it comes to promoting fair trade, that's what I always say.

Sugar bowl

Skating lesson today.  My daughter and I are taught simultaneously, but at opposite ends of the rink, which makes it easier to maintain our pact (instituted by the Girl) of not acknowledging each other's presence on the ice.   While the Girl learns dazzling tricks - waltz jumps, spins, lunges etc, I'm still working away at basic turns and edges.  But when I think back to how I started out (barely upright) I'm happy with my modest progress.

Straight from the ice-rink to the bowling alley, for some ten-pin fun with 4H friends.  The boy who was competing against my two is almost a pro-bowler - he plays every week and enters competitions.  So obviously he won outright. At least the Girl and Boy managed to compete against each other amicably enough and without any embarassing loss of temper.

Yesterday at the mall we were briefly diverted by a couple of guys in fake safari suits trying to sell us a sugar bear.  These tiny pop-eyed marsupials are certainly very cute, possibly even cuter than chipmunks.  But tell me, given the lengths we've had to go to to evict rodents from the house, why would I pay good money to bring one home with me?

Keep it simple, Charlie Brown

Ages ago (and if I could remember exactly when it was I'd put in a link) the Girl and I attended something called "A Day of Simple Giving".  Organised by Grassroot Givers, it was an opportunity for people to get together and make things to be donated to various local charities such as homeless shelters.  There was another such day today, and people were putting together gift baskets of toiletries, decorating cookies for the food pantry, filling bags with bean soup ingredients and various other activities.  The kids had a go at making stress balls by filling balloons with rice, while I knitted a dishcloth (like you do).

There was a good turnout for the event - lots of families, a whole load of Girl Scouts, and quite a few people I knew from the Farmers' Market, school, 4H and other places.  A team of older teenagers led younger kids and anyone else so inclined in all the dance routines, from YMCA to the Cha-Cha Slide.  There was a cheery atmosphere, and the event succeeded in raising awareness and activitating creativity in support of some worthwhile causes.  I'm glad we went along. 

This evening, as an antidote to that dose of worthiness, the Man, Boy and I made a trip to the Mall, where it's Christmas-business-as-usual.  The Boy lingered longingly (but hopelessly) around the Holiday lawn ornaments - he was particuarly taken with this enormous inflatable snowglobe featuring a couple of his current favourite characters.  Sadly for him he doesn't have the sort of  fun parents who would ever buy anything remotely like this.

DAREdevil

Today it was the turn of the Girl's classroom to open for visitors.  I went along in the afternoon.  There were no special events, the kids were just following their regular Friday timetable.  So there was a "word of the day" test, some geography (designing their own islands), a weekly reflection sheet to fill in, and a performance of "the DARE song" (DARE stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education), which the Girl later told me is quite fun but she can't really see the point of it.

My overall observation of the class was that it's a smooth-running set-up, where everyone seems comfortable with what they have to do.  I also noted that while ten year-old girls are quite sensible animals, ten year-old boys are mostly goofballs.

As a last task of the day our still distinctively British Girl had the all-American responsibility of furling the stars and stripes.