Wednesday, November 21, 2007

It's alive!

My blog, that is. After almost a month of neglect, I found it gasping for breath, eyes closed, pulse weak, begging for a glass of water.

I wanted to post about Halloween, and the fact that no one goes trick-or-treating, even though the shops are all festooned with Halloween decorations in October. And then I wanted to explain that we always have a Halloween party for our children and their friends, and take them trick-or-treating in our building, but we have to distribute bags of candy ahead of time to the neighbors so they'll have something to give when the kids come by. And how some of the neighbors had to be taught trick-or-treating basics 101, because the first year, some of them would dump the all the candy in one kid's bag, wave to the rest of the candyless kids, smile, then shut the door.

But no one wants to read a Halloween post on the eve of Thanksgiving, so I'm moving on to Turkey Day--a brief post today, then more tomorrow.

Every year I make Thanksgiving dinner for my husband's family, who are all Thanksgiving experts, of course, because they've seen American Thanksgiving dinners in movies.

A few years ago on Thanksgiving, my father-in-law gathered my daughters up onto his lap, and said in his let-me-tell-you-a-story voice:

"Girls, today is a very special day for Americans."

My girls looked at him expectantly.

He continued: "Today is the anniversary of the day the Americans won their independence from England."


In the end, it's all about food and family.

Happy 4th of--er, Thanksgiving, to all!