Thanksgiving

Our family is hopeful that everyone out there had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  We certainly did.  

Here were a few of my favorite memories (in no particular order) of Thanksgiving 2013.

My Mama's Cooking:

(Her broccoli casserole was worth the drive...)

  

The Easy-Pass Debacle

Warning:  You MUST be from WV to understand the humor of this video clip.  

Being With Family:

My niece Lindsay, whom I dearly love.

Tim and his brother Steve, whose family was also there.  We were likewise thankful to visit with Tim's cousin Clydean, her son Zachery, and his three children.  But I forgot to get a picture of them...

My Aunt Penny and Uncle Butch, and my Cousin Beki and her husband Rich, whom I hadn't seen in years.
What a small world that Beki and I are now both fellow Tarheels who live right up the road from each other!

And our kids always love catching-up with Cousin Megan and spending the night together at Nana's house.  And no...they didn't all cram together to sleep on that one bed.  I just did that for the picture.  :D

Each of Us Making A List of 100 Things We Are Thankful For.

And remembering that the Lord has been soooooo good to us!

Eating My Dad's Red-Eye Gravy.  Yum.

Then watching Dad feed red-eye gravy to my son John, 

who also loved it.

Then watching Dad feed red-eye gravy to his dog, 

who did not love it.

The Post-Thanksgiving Dinner Nap-athon:  

Spending A Month in Homeschooling Learning More 

About the Puritans/Pilgrims:

• The first Thanksgiving meal was prepared by only four women!  There were only four women who survived the first winter, and they were responsible for all the cooking for the entire colony of Plymouth, plus more than 90 Indians.  The men of the colony entertained and socialized with the Indians while the food was prepared. 
• Only 50/102 of the Pilgrims on the Mayflower were coming to America to find religious freedom: others were sailors and such.  Of those 50 Puritans, 34 were children.  So it's astounding to realize that this major settlement of our country was based on the religious convictions of only 16 adults.
• The Pilgrims didn't go straight to America after they left England  They originally headed to Holland, because Holland was the only religiously free country in Europe. The Pilgrims didn't really like it there.  So America was their last hope.
• Massachusetts was not where the Pilgrims had hoped to land.  They actually wanted to end-up in Virginia, but they got off-course. 
• Our family doesn't completely ascribe to the same doctrine as the Puritans/Pilgrims.  The Pilgrims who came to America were Calvinists, while we derive our beliefs from the Anabaptists.  Nonetheless, we are very moved by the Pilgrims' determination to go wherever they needed in order to truly worship God.
• The Pilgrims had to bury their dead at night, and they didn't mark graves.  They didn't want the Indians who watched them to know how many people they had lost, for fear that the Indians would attack their small numbers.
• The Pilgrims didn't have a doctor, so they chose a Deacon to take care of everyone medically because he was "responsible for the congregation's health."  I think that's a great example of the importance of Deacons in history.
• The Pilgrims were appalled by the Indians' lack of clothing.
• William Bradford was NOT the first governor of Plymouth, as we had thought.  The original governor died the first winter, and then William Bradford was chosen. 
• The first Thanksgiving meal was not the first or only time the Pilgrims fed the Indians.  The Indians liked the Pilgrims' hospitality so much that they actually showed up quite often.  It was so often, in fact, that the Governor once had to send messengers to Chief Massassoit to ask him to get his Indians to quit showing up and eating all the Pilgrims' food.  
• There were almost twice as many Indians as Pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving meal.
• The Pilgrims and Indians did not stay friends forever.  After the first Thanksgiving, things went downhill.  The Pilgrims got mad because the Indians killed some of their cattle that were eating the Indians' cornfield, and the Indians got mad when the Pilgrims started "imposing their religion" on the Indians.  (BTW:  "Imposing religion" is also known as evangelism, and we're pretty big fans of that in my house. Go Pilgrims!)
• Some of the Pilgrims had unusual names:  Resolved, Love, Wrastling, Humility, Desire, Remember, and Oceanus.
• The Pilgrims did NOT wear the black clothes and buckled hats and shoes like we always think of.  The Pilgrims actually wore very colorful and stylish clothes.  When the sun and wear faded their clothes, the Pilgrims re-dyed them so they'd be colorful again.
• The Pilgrims didn't have a separate church building.  They placed importance on "the church" being the congregation, not the building.  
• The Pilgrims were in worship service 8 hours every Sunday.  Four hours in the morning, four hours in the late afternoon.  And it was against the law to miss.  
• The Pilgrims had a lot of interesting laws.  It was illegal in Plymouth to get drunk, to slander someone, and for women to be out after dark.  If the colony felt that a child was getting out of control, that child's father was punished, usually by being put in the stocks.

We made bread the same way the Pilgrims did: with stone-ground cornmeal, water, salt, milk, eggs, and butter.  Quite good, actually.  Tastes just like fried Southern cornbread.

We also made posterboard collages with magazine/catalog cut-outs of the things the Pilgrims probably wish they had.  The boys' collages consisted of things like clean water, fresh fruit, and technology.  Anna's collage consisted of toys and more stylish clothes.  :D