Thanksgiving Day….a blessed family day

 What a wonderful day filled with love, laughter, food, song, and dance.  And more love!

This Thanksgiving was special in so many ways.  One was that it was the first time that I had not made Thanksgiving dinner.  And the first time that we had spent Thanksgiving at one of our children’s home.

Candice baked the most delicious turkey in her turkey sized clay pot.  I’m going to ask Santa for a clay pot…we’ve never tasted a better turkey.  It was probably also due to the special spices she used.

Marina prepared a most unusual and tasty baked vegetable dish.  See all the vegetables she used.  She even sliced up a daikon.  Don’t feel bad of you don’t know what a daikon is….neither did we.  It’s a long white winter radish.

Stella spend the day completing her cheese cake and making a mixed fruit pie (raspberry, blueberry, and blackberry).  She let me help her with the pie crust.  We didn’t have a rolling pin, so Grandpa had the brilliant idea to use a long bottle.  We had the perfect bottle….a wine bottle filled with water.  It actually worked better than my expensive rolling pin.

Ready for the oven.

Wow!!!  45 minutes later.  Marina’s creation was beautiful!  And it tasted as good as it looked.

The day that we arrived, Grandpa showed Marina and Stella a video of us dancing.  They loved it.  We asked if they wanted us to teach them how to dance, and they jumped at the opportunity. 

We immediately realized that they both were natural dancers.  

So we hatched a plan…we wouldn’t tell Candice that the girls were learning how to dance the swing.  We would practice our dancing every time Candice was out of the house for the next three days.  Luckily, Candice is still doing her run streak, so we knew we would have ample opportunity to polish up our dancing.  

One of the problems is that I had to unlearn how to be a follow—and learn how to be a lead.  In other words, I had to learn how to do all the steps backwards, and how to lead Marina and Stella in each dance move.  My Danny said that I did great, but he does love me.

The final part of our plan was that Grandpa and I would tell Candice, Marina, and Stella that we wanted to do a special Thanksgiving Day performance.  The three of them would sit down to watch.  Then at a preplanned time, Marina and Stella would get up, cut in, and ask if we would dance with them.

So here we are with our Thanksgiving surprise for Candice.  This was a gift we wanted to give to her—her girls dancing for their mother!

Here is our Youtube Video of the four of us dancing. 

We had such fun.  Here are The Four Dancekateers!

Back to preparing Thanksgiving dinner.  Candice worked on the mashed potatoes and gravy while Stella made the filling for the berry pie.

Then Marina and Stella designed the fish for the top of the pie crust.  They had heard of a herring pumpkin pie, and thought it sounded horrible.  But they saw pictures of the herring pumpkin pie, and it had a fish on the top of the pie.  

They both did like the idea of decorating their pie with a fish, so our Thanksgiving triple berry pie was destined to have a fish!

Here’s their pie—all ready to go in the oven.  It’s amazingly creative!

The pies were absolutely perfect…..almost too pretty to eat.  

By this time the house looked and smelled just like Thanksgiving should!

We are very traditional….I asked Grandpa to carve our daughter’s beautiful turkey.  He did a fine job, as always!

I made broccoli casserole.  But as you can see, with all the expert cooks in the home, Grandpa and I could have showed up empty handed, and we still would have had a ton of leftovers.

A beautiful Thanksgiving dinner, with three of our beautiful girls!

We finally decided to cut into the pies that Stella, with Marina’s help, worked on for two days.  And we were glad that we did…delicious.  They were so good that Grandpa had two servings of each!

But Thanksgiving Day was not over….Marina is in her school choir and sings with the Boulder Opera.  She sang an Italian song that she had recently learned in her private lessons.  

We had never heard her sing a solo, before, and were so moved that she brought us to tears.  Luckily, Marina willingly sang her song for us again.  We would never get tired of hearing her sing…more beautiful than a nightingale!

We won’t be together for Christmas, so Grandpa and I decided to bring the Christmas gifts that I had made for Candice and the girls.

As you can see, the gifts were a hit!

This Thanksgiving will be one that we will always remember….as I said, it was filled with laughter, food, song, and dance.  And so much love!

Thank you, dear daughter, Candice, and sweet granddaughters, Marina and Stella.  You gave us a memory that we will always hold in our hearts.