Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year. As for me and my family, we had a nice day spent with friends. The kids did an "I'm Thankful For..." arts and crafts project that we will mail to Erick soon. We didn't have a traditional "turkey day", though.

We ate nachos instead.

I know you are shocked! "How can you have Thanksgiving Day with out turkey!!???" That is what most people said when they heard what we were doing for Thanksgiving. Now, while it is true that we did not eat turkey, what 98% of Americans eat each year at Thanksgiving, we were still thankful for what we have, thankful for all our blessings. And of course there is a story as to why we ate nachos...

We moved to Hawaii in December 2003, and Erick deployed to Afghanistan in April 2004. He was home in November 2004 for R&R. He was, in fact, home about two days before Thanksgiving, and I hadn't yet bought all the food since I didn't know what he would want to do that day. It was a good thing I didn't go shopping and buy a turkey, he didn't want to have me do all the cooking just for a turkey dinner. As you all know, preparing a Thanksgiving dinner is a full day of cooking. It seems a little silly to take all that time to cook when you only have 14 days to spend together. Erick said he'd rather just spend the day relaxing with his family, maybe have a pizza or go out to eat...

My very good friend, Val used to be a cook in the Army. Her husband is still a cook in the Army. Of course, when it is Thanksgiving, the DFAC (Dining FACility, where the cooks work) goes all out for the holiday. And since they have to feed mass quantities of people, imagine how much turkey and trimmings they have to cook. This has burned Val out on making the traditional meal for Thanksgiving. That year while Erick was home, she was alone with her children and had no big plans for the day, her husband was in Iraq at the time. Since we didn't have any plans, and neither did she, we all decided to spent the day together and have a no frills, relaxed Thanksgiving 2004. As dinner approached we began to think of food, namely pizza. After calling several places, we came to the obvious conclusion that all places were closed. That of course includes all restaurants and all grocery stores. So we cobbled together a dinner of "from scratch nachos". She had fresh corn tortillas that we fried, pinto beans and chicken, we had black olives, cheddar cheese, sour cream... and so it went on, each of us bringing ingredients together to make one meal. And it was great! We baked them in the oven and the kids ate with no complaints. We washed the nachos down with Kool-aid for the kids and Coronas for the adults. Once the kids fell asleep, we hung out talking late into the night.

So, as I see it, our nachos were quite similar to the original Thanksgiving, in spirit at least. Each of us brought something to the meal to share and of course we were thankful that year. Like each and every year. Leave it to one year-plus long deployments to make you realize what is important in life, and what you are thankful for. Now, when our husbands are gone (they are on the same deployment schedule) Val and I have our traditional Thanksgiving Nacho dinner. And everyone still thinks we are nuts for not eating turkey...

A quick funny story to end with. Joesph and Lily were filthy from playing outside after dinner on Thanksgiving. I thought ahead and had the kids bring a change of clothes since I knew they might get dirty. Now, my friend Val has a large home with 5 bedrooms and 3 full bathrooms. The showers were full of the boys washing up, so we let Lily use the bathtub in the master bathroom. We have done this before with no problem, Lily is big girl in 1st grade after all and she can take her own showers and baths. In all, there were 9 children in the house (not counting baby Leah) so it was a little confused, but we got everyone settled with movies and blankets and snacks... The playroom was showing WALL-E and the livingroom had Kung Fu Panda on, all kids were content. The adults were out on the back lanai starting up a game of Cranium. I just laid the baby down to sleep in the spare room when I realized it had been awhile since I had seen or heard from Lily. I walked towards the back of the house where WALL-E was playing, thinking she had fallen asleep watching it, and I saw an empty room with the movie on the menu screen. "That's odd..." I thought, as I climbed the stairs. I walked down the long hallway (it really is long, it is a very big house), and at the end of it, I started to hear a voice, faint and sad. I hurried into the master bathroom and I found Lily, in the bathtub all wet, cold and red-eyed. "What's wrong Lily? Have you been calling for someone for a long time?" I asked her as I felt the lukewarm water. "Y-y-y-yes, momma. ~sob~sniff~ I n-n-n-needed help opening the shampoo bottle." she whimpered. It was a press button shampoo, one tiny push and I had fixed her problem. Lily just said a soft, "oh." I asked her why she didn't come down and ask for help? She was afraid one of the boys would see her naked. "Well, why didn't you wrap a towel around you?" She didn't know where the towels were. There was a towel hanging on the towel rack in the bathroom. So, she spent about 2 hours in the bathtub, and who knows how long stubbornly calling for someone to help open a shampoo bottle. That is my daughter, and she gets that stubborn streak from me. But I felt like "Mother of the Year", poor kid all alone in the bath, waiting for some help! I honestly thought she was out of the tub, otherwise I'd have checked on her much sooner! The house is so big, we really couldn't hear her calling, not with all the other kids making noise as well. I washed her hair for her, ran a comb through it and gave her a big hug. She asked "Why are my toes all funny looking?" I stifled a laugh and reminded her how long she spent in the tub. She was feeling good enough to try a little giggle, "Oh yeah, I was in there a looong time!" (~big grin~) Silly girl.

Happy Thanksgiving.