Our Thanksgiving

As you can imagine, my Thanksgiving consisted of a lot of cooking, which I wisely elected to start on Wednesday.

Bread stuffing starts by making a fresh loaf of oatmeal-wheat bread:

Here Younger Daughter tears the bread into pieces. We left the pieces on a cookie sheet overnight to get a little stale, which makes for a less soggy bread stuffing.

For desserts, this year we elected for pistachio pudding pie and pumpkin pie. I just used graham crackers for the crusts.

Here's the loot by late Wednesday evening.

On Wednesday I also made wild rice stuffing, which is my own personal indulgence. No one else likes it but me (hee hee), which means I can add all the onions I want and no one objects. Hee hee.

Thanksgiving for us started out very early at our county animal shelter. Thursday is the usual day the girls do their volunteer work there; and the needs of the animals don't stop just because the shelter is closed to the public for the day. So in we went. There was a lot of work to do, so they were there for 2 1/2 hours.

(Here's a cat, playfully pulling on the cord of my camera -- hence the blurry photo.)

We made it home just after noon, and I had to rush to put the turkey in right away in order for it to be done by 5 pm.

Bread stuffing ready to cook in the back; potatoes ready to peel in the front.

The mashed potatoes became Older Daughter's project.

To keep the chaos in the kitchen under control, I had to stop periodically and wash some dishes.

Lydia hung around just "in case" anything happened to drop on the floor.

Dinner rolls are probably the most complicated and time-consuming thing I make. Here's the beginning.

Dough before kneading...

...and after.

First rising.

Older Daughter punches down the dough...

...and then while I cut out the rolls,

...she scores the rolls, brushes them with melted butter, and folds them over.

Then it's time for the second rising, on the shelf behind the stove where it's warm from the stove's heat.

Making whipped cream for the pies.

Don sharpens the knives. This has become an annual Thanksgiving tradition after the embarrassing time several years ago when our pastor joined us for dinner and generously offered to carve the turkey. All our knives were so dull we went through five or six before we found one marginally sharp enough for the poor fellow to hack through the turkey.

Making candied yams, a dish particularly favored by our young houseguest GG.

At the last minute we were able to welcome our dear friends Mike and Judy, whose original Thanksgiving plans fell through but they didn't let us know because they "didn't want to bother us" on Thanksgiving Day. Bother us...! We had a twenty-pound turkey for only five people and plenty of food. Thanksgiving is a day for family AND friends. We were thrilled to have them join us.

They brought a wonderful Chardonnay.

Since our kitchen table is small, we used it for the adults...

...and dressed up a card table for the girls, so they wouldn't have to subject themselves to our boring solve-the-world's-problems conversation.

The turkey turned out beautifully...

...and the feast of abundance was a blessing indeed.

There were far too many leftovers to fit into the fridge, so we used our (ahem) "outdoor refrigerator" to handle the overflow. (The temperature was closer to freezer temps than refrigerator temps, but that's okay.)

The nice part about Thanksgiving cooking is I go on strike for about three days afterward. Is anyone hungry? No problem! There are plenty of leftovers, help yourself!

Volunteering

It's been said that homeschooled kids are more civic-minded and do more volunteer work than publicly-schooled kids. I don't know if that's true or not, but I do know my girls do their share of civic volunteering.

About a year and a half ago, we lost our house cat. It was an unpleasant blow to my cat-loving kids, and they immediately began lobbying for a replacement (or two).

Trouble is, we have dogs who don't like cats. So another house cat is out of the question until we have different dogs.

So, faced with a dearth of purring, my girls decided on the next best thing: volunteer at our county animal shelter.

Like many shelters, this place runs on a shoestring budget and is always looking for volunteers. When I first made arrangements over a year ago, the director was hesitant to allow two such young kids to work without me (the parent) present. (The rules are: volunteers under 15 require a parent to be present.) I had no problem with this; I was happy to sit in the lobby with a book or my AlphaSmart while the kids worked.

But in something under a week, the director changed her mind.  She had never worked with homeschooled kids before, and couldn't believe their work ethic and maturity level. Over the past year my girls have brought in underage homeschooled friends for a stint of volunteer work (such as our neighbor Miss Calamity), and the director has been delighted with them all.

Up to this point, most of the volunteer help the shelter's staff has gotten comes from teens who are required to put in community service for some sort of legal transgression. (As you can imagine, they're not always the easiest bunch to work with.) And we know a few other publicly-schooled kids who love animals and who also volunteer. But as far as I know, my girls are the longest-term volunteer help the shelter has ever had. My oldest daughter recently was invited to submit her résumé to our local library for a possible part-time position, and she was able to use the animal shelter's director as an enthusiastic reference. So starts Older Daughter's professional credentials.

So it's been over a year now, and every Wednesday we make our trek into the county seat where I drop the kids off for a couple of hours. They clean cages, launder bedding, wipe down and disinfect litter boxes and walls, and generally give the hard-working director and her staff some help. The main reason the kids have continued working for so long is they just plain love cats.

Some of the cats hang out in the lobby:

Others are in rooms separated between adults, adolescents, and kittens.

Fortunately - and especially as volunteers - the girls are given lots of time to just play with the cats.

This guy is a favorite, though he was born without one front leg (he was hard to photograph).

The rooms have all sorts of cat climbing apparatus.

This guy is named Sylvester. He's huge.

The girls nicknamed this cat Uncle Mike after my older brother, the classic nerd. The girls think the cat has a classy "nerd" look.

This shy fellow was curled up out of sight.

The director was giving this cat a flea bath (the cat was NOT amused). Fleas, as you can imagine, are something the shelter must constantly battle against.

I don't know how long the kids will want to work at the shelter, but they've shown no signs of losing interest. Either way, I'm proud of them.