Thanksgiving

Let me just start out by saying that we've spent how many Thanksgivings here in PNG now?  But this year, for the first time ever, our "Thanksgiving Saturday" really felt like a real Thanksgiving.  Back home, Thanksgiving encompasses a 4 day weekend.  Here, it is not even a holiday, but we squeeze it in among the business of a regular week.  A few people celebrate on Thursday.  But in my opinion, that's the worst.  After a busy, regular, NORMAL day of school and work, to try to squeeze in a special meal and say that it's Thanksgiving is just.... wrong.  Granted, much of Thanksgiving is about the food, but more than that, it's a day and an event.  So we celebrate on Saturday.  That helps it feel like it's a little more like a real holiday.

Of course, ours started off a tad backwards this year.  Back in the U.S., you have Thanksgiving and then Black Friday.  Here, we had our annual Christmas Store Sale in the morning, and then we came and had our Thanksgiving feast.

Because there are very, very few opportunities for shopping in country, and those are very very limited as to what is available, well, shopping doesn't happen much.  And that can make it hard when it comes to shopping for birthdays or Christmas.  So a few years ago someone got the bright idea to have an annual Christmas sale.  The store management and employees (and other members of the community) work hard for several months to have items purchased and shipped over here.  Then the store works all out to get ready.  Seemingly, over night they transform the store with Christmas decorations, and clear out and set up the loading dock and receiving area for the Christmas sale.  There's quite a range of goodies:  toys like lego, water toys, games etc, candles, tools, a few small appliances, crafty items, shoes, etc.  Unfortunately, they also come with a MAJOR price tag.  Once the cost of the item + the shipping to PNG prices + any customs or duty is added together, often an item will cost twice what it might have cost originally.  Sigh.  So while it's fun to go and look around, I tend to not buy much.  This year I found some fun Christmas candies and glow sticks to use as stocking stuffers.  I was excited because usually I don't have anything to put in the kids stockings.  This year they'll have at least 3 things. =)

Anyway, after shopping, it was time to come home and get ready for Thanksgiving.

We invited two families we are good friends with and our next door neighbor, who's wife is currently away at a teaching conference over for our late lunch.  Altogether, there were 21 of us, with 14 being kids.  We'd had so much rain recently, I was worried it was going to pour and we'd have to cram all of us into our house.  Thankfully, we had sun, and the kids were able to eat and play outside.

We ate.  Oh boy, did we eat!  There was so much good food!  We had chicken breasts, since turkey is just too hard to get (and would cost WAY TOO MUCH, if I did find it).  And I opted out of roasting whole chickens since just 1 alone would cost me like $15, and we would need at least two for our crowd.  We had chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, rolls, veggies (both cooked and veggies sticks with dip), Grandma's jello salad and mac and cheese.  Let's just say, we weren't going to starve.

some of the spread......

more food!  there was just too much to fit on one table!

how come everybody else's kids looked at the camera, but not mine?

 As both part of the decoration and part of the day I made a Thanksgiving Tree.  I cut out leaves from some fun fall-ish papers and we all wrote things we were thankful for on them.  Then, before dessert we got to read everything that we were thankful for.  I would say the #1 thing was Family!

Our Thanksgiving Tree

Jadia and Nathan helping Matt read the Thankful leaves

some of the kids

 Then, even before our bellies really had any room, it was dessert time.  We had a fantastic brownie dessert and carmelita bars brought by Sarah, and because Thanksgiving just wouldn't be Thanksgiving without pie, I made an apple pie.  I found the recipe on The Pioneer Woman's blog and it was really yummy.

After we truly were 'stuffed to the gills' us adults whipped out some games while the kids played Wii and watched Backyardigans in the back of the house.  We had fun playing Dominion and Ticket to Ride.

Eventually, around 6pm one of the families left.  But our other friends stayed and we pulled out the leftovers and all munched away again and just sat around and talked while the kids played.  At about 8pm it was time for everyone to get home and get kids to bed, so the rest of the guests left.

Julianne and Rebekah dressed up as princesses

It was just fun to have a whole, long get-together.  We are so very thankful for dear friends with whom we can spend the holidays with.  Here, when family is so far away, our friends really do become our substitute families.  And we are very grateful for them.

I'd have to say, yesterday was an awesome Thanksgiving day!