Thanksgiving 2011

(Elders Horlacher and Singleton, Gary, me, and Natalie)

Excerpt from a letter to my grandmother, Nanny:

We had a delayed Thanksgiving here in the Emerald Isle. They don't have a Thanksgiving holiday so on Thursday Gary and the girls had to go off to classes! But we had arranged to have a big Thanksgiving feast today (Saturday) to celebrate, on a day when all the dads and kids could be here. I cooked, baked and watched Christmas movies like It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol with the kids for two days to prepare, then we had the other two American families who are here, and the missionaries, over to eat. The kids made turkeys out of construction paper and wrote things they're thankful for on the feathers while we put the finishing touches on the meal Then we sat down and ate.
(Mag and Soph and good friend Heather Botts by the food)

Since I was in charge of the food assignments, I made sure we had all the essentials: turkey with gravy, mashed potatoes, candied sweet potatoes (only without the marshmallows because they don't have them here), green bean casserole (but not as good as Natalie's), jello salad, salad, stuffing, and rolls. Everyone brought a dessert too: I made Lindsey's amazing frosted sugar cookies, and the other families brought pumpkin cake and apple pie. They had to have their mom mail them a can of pumpkin and a yellow cake mix from the States to make the pumpkin cake, since you can't get either over here and they really wanted to make that recipe. And I thought I was the only one emotionally attached to the food I ate... :-)

(Maggie, Sophie, Liesl, and Spencer. And Afton's arms)

Somebody also brought some mince pies, as it seems to be such a culturally prevalent food - you see mince pie everywhere in Ireland. We all tried it, and it was... okay. Not really what I wanted to fill up the remaining vacant corners of my stomach with though, especially when I could stuff another sugar cookie down there. We all had a little nibble and called it good.

After dinner, which took about two hours, and dessert, which took about another hour, we sat around and talked. We considered playing games but ended up just sitting around and chatting - we had 11 adults and 6 very well behaved kids there and it was a really fun, diverse group of people to talk to. Eventually one of our friends, Collin, who is here at the University of Limerick getting a Master's in Music, pulled out his mandolin and his concertina (like an accordion) and played some Irish tunes for us while the little kids jumped around and danced. It was really fun. Eventually we slowly cleaned up, divided the leftovers, and one family left to go to a Rugby match while another stayed here with us to watch movies and lay on the carpet to digest all the food we just ate. Altogether it was a lovely day. Not quite up to the par of luxury and culinary excellence that always prevails at the Hunter Extended Family shindigs, but considering the resources we had, I think we did pretty well. Wish we could have been at your house though! Love you Nanny!