A Family Style Thanksgiving

All the schools around here have the entire week off for Thanksgiving, so we followed suit.  Early in the week, the kids cleaned up the garage and reinstated their clubhouse.  Benson joined them on more than one occasion because he noted the snacks they brought out with them.  He has become a fan of tortilla chips.  

They got some jiu-jitsu in earlier in the week as well.  Their 40+ class size dropped from 25 kids on Monday to 15 kids on Wednesday.  It was a good week to train.  The facility got an action shot of Henry with his arm poised in an arm lock.

On Thanksgiving morning, Josiah snuck upstairs with the scissors and tape in tow.  He later showed off his second turkey tissue tram.    

Later, he and Caroline got to work on our name cards.  Caroline was wise to add our last initial to avoid any confusion should another family show up with the same first names. 

  

Henry was all over the Thanksgiving meal planning.  He wanted to be in the kitchen helping, so he took over doing the dishes.  He repeatedly said he wanted us to eat family style.  More than anything, he wanted to eat at 11:00 a.m. because he did not want to eat breakfast with the intention that all his stomach capacity would be available for the big meal.  We negotiated and finally compromised on pushing the meal back to 12:30 p.m., all the while strongly encouraging him to eat something for breakfast.  He ate toast.

We had a mostly traditional meal just like the kids asked.  We made the Cornish game hens and had mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, hominy in place of corn, and green beans.  Technically we bought rolls, but they did not make it to the table.  After the hens came out of the oven, we turned it off and let the rolls warm up with the remaining heat.  As we went to bed that night, I remembered that the rolls were still 'warming up.'  We followed Henry's advice and served everything family style.  He said he didn't want to waste any time walking back and forth to the kitchen to get more food.  

Henry and Todd each got a whole hen.  And despite giving Benson canned dog food, he still hung out with Henry during the meal.  He knows who will sneak him bits of meat.

Josiah served himself a plate full of mashed potatoes and gravy.  When that was eaten, he got another plate and filled it up with a second helping of mashed potatoes and gravy.  A third plate was acquired for his cake.  

We were supposed to have a Costco pecan pie for dessert but my car was in the shop for a few days this week so the Costco trip was never taken.  Instead we had a Thanksgiving Angel food cake, which actually turned out nicely because after all the heavy food, it was a light treat.  We did make it to Costco this weekend and got that pecan pie.     

We got our turkey pictures in, too.  

It was a good Thanksgiving.  Very low key.  It rained all day, so in the afternoon Henry brought out a puzzle.  We ended up doing two puzzles over the weekend since it rained all day Saturday as well.  

Josiah has been into the Looney Tunes recently, so he drew a lot this week.  

The day after Thanksgiving, we got to the activity the kids had been waiting all week for - gingerbread houses.  We bought a set of 5 houses.  The kids had seen the different designs on the box and each had picked out what they wanted.  The cookies came in sheets that were indented, but in no way separated.  I used a butter knife like a chisel and was able to successfully break apart my house pieces.  Due to that success, both Henry and Caroline asked me to chisel their pieces off as well.  Well, my house was incredibly simple - 5 squares.  They picked the more complicated houses so when the chiseling began, so did the tears.  I was not successful.  There were a couple of broken walls and one broken roof.  We did try to explain that we could use the icing to glue them back together.  That was not the solution they were looking for.  They were not happy.  Henry aired his frustration for all to hear.  He was told to work with it or leave the table.  He decided to work with it.  Caroline aired her frustrations as well and then left the table on her own accord.  She was more on the angry end of things.  She came back down when Todd convinced her to decorate his house.  Meanwhile, Josiah had already frosted and decorated his house before Henry and Caroline had assembled theirs.  His style was a tent shape, so it went smoothly.  In the end, four out of five houses were decorated.  The remaining house was eaten.  They ate a ton of candy in the process and have continued to pick at their houses at every chance.   Next year we will definitely buy the ugly Christmas sweater cookies to decorate.  Nice and flat and no breaking apart!  

Henry's gingerbread house came with a lovely story attached.  The homeowner fell off the ladder and can be seen on the ground severed in half in a pool of blood.  His wife is standing nearby in a puddle of tears.  Heartwarming.

We ended our break week with putting up the Christmas tree.  

Caroline was our star put-er on-er.  

And now we try to finish out our school year.

Thanksgiving Plans and Christmas Pictures

The first half of our week was incredibly busy completing all the projects that were due on our final CC day.  There were parties to buy for and chart projects to finish.  Henry's class had a party in the morning as well as the afternoon.  Both Henry and Caroline had cupcake parties for their Essentials class.  Henry, of course, chose a chocolate cupcake with chocolate frosting.  Caroline chose a vanilla cupcake with vanilla icing.  Her side dish of toppings gave it additional flavor.  

Before the partying, the Essentials kids presented on their chart projects.  Henry chose to represent Interjections with his Lego creation.  He had all the characters on the Ferris wheel yelling out Interjections.  He anticipated kids touching the Lego figures, so he wrote a little card that stayed on the top.  It seemed to help for the most part.  

Caroline presented on her arcade game of prepositions.  She really wanted to do an old school arcade game.  She chose Super Mario Bros because 'everyone knows that.'  On her game screen, she added all the prepositions she could.  She then had to explain how she incorporated the prepositions to her classmates.     

Henry and Caroline are finished with their CC semesters so they have a long break until January.  They still have all their other school.  Basically, they have a break from writing papers and weekly presentations.  We do have a Market Day coming up after Thanksgiving break.  It will be a potluck as well as a time for kids to sell homemade wares.  From our crew, only Josiah is interested in selling.  He has been busy preparing more drawings to sell.  This past week he drew a few from Space Jam. 

He also drew a few for himself - Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney.

One evening, the kids did one of their typical challenges. They gave themselves the task of cutting out pictures from magazines and advertisements to represent their future families.  

Josiah's 

Henry's (Apparently his wife's name is Amy.)

Caroline's family included a lot of foster and adopted kids because she is really interested in doing that.  

Josiah earned a stripe at jiu-jitsu this week.  He was quite happy that he was the first Cockrell to get a stripe at their new facility.  And, because they are in a new location, we needed a closer celebration place.  Smoothie King was now too far away. The kids were quick to spot that two doors down there was a Bahama Buck's, so that is the new "stripe" place.  

By the end of the week, everything school related had calmed down considerably.  We took advantage of that and did our Christmas picture.  

We tried to recreate an old picture from when Caroline and Josiah were 3 and 7.  

Josiah had a good weekend adding to his quest for the best chicken fingers.  Todd took him to Cheddar's and their chicken fingers jumped up to his all time top three.  To quell any animosity from the younger two siblings, they made a stop on the drive home and brought sushi for Henry and Caroline.  

The kids have requested a very traditional Thanksgiving meal.  We sat down this evening to get everyone's input and they'll get their mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, green beans, and pie.  We did swap out the turkey for Cornish game hens.  Those were incredibly juicy the last time Todd cooked them.  

Now we look forward to a much more relaxed week ahead.