Trick or Treat

Good golly - what a picture this is! In case you can't tell by looking, Will is Indian Jones, Zanna is some sort of fairy with wings (she called herself a butterfly) and my dear husband is a monk. I never thought in a million years he'd dress up. We bought it because it was so cheap and thought maybe he could use it for Reformation or something. Well, ten years and he still surprised me! Ha! They look great anyway and they had a great time.

To fill in the rest of the month of October (now that we're halfway through November), we had a lovely Thanksgiving. Canadian Thanksgiving that is because in this house we celebrate both. Now to be honest, I usually think of Canadian Thanksgiving as the "trial run" to the real Thanksgiving. I do appreciate it being in October when the fall colors are at their peak and often the weather is nice enough to take a walk after our big meal. But growing up with a November Thanksgiving with the Pilgrim thing and the official kickoff to the Christmas season, it's been difficult. Until last year. This is the second year now that I've gone all out for Cn. Thanksgiving and the Am. one has been in the way - let's get on with Christmas already. Perhaps I'm becoming Canadianized (is that a word?). So this year we had turkey and all the trimmings and invited some of our CHinese friends over for a traditional North American feast. I had hoped it was something they hadn't experienced before and I was pleased to find out for the most part that this was the case. Our friend Rebecca said that their Chinese friends had done a Chinese version of one - can you imagine what that would be like? Maybe our version of Chinese food - a poor comparison! Well anyway, they "gobbled" everything up and the big hit was the green bean casserole. Too funny!!

I still find it difficult when Am Thanksgiving rolls around - I want to celebrate it and I know my family is celebrating it and I want it to be a big deal. I turn on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, take the day off of school, etc and make the big meal. But it's weird when no one else is making a big deal of it too. I don't want my kids to miss out on this tradition. I want them to "get it". So this year we're preparing a bit ahead of time for it and will do a unit study on it next week. Will's reading the Magic tree house book "Thanksgiving on Thursday" and will do a book report on it.

I went and did something crazy this month just to keep things interesting, I suppose. I got Invisaligns for my teeth. This is the alternative to braces. I've always been annoyed with my crooked teeth and now I'm out to fix it. So I've got these clear inserts over my teeth I change weekly and the idea is no one can tell. However, I can't eat or drink anything other than water with them in and I've got to keep them in for 22hours a day. This leaves me a precious 2 hours each day to stuff myself! Actually, I'm drinking way more water than I usually do and if I'm really lucky I'll loose a few pounds and have straight teeth. What a deal!