Thanksgiving

 Today the kids both had Thanksgiving celebrations in their classrooms.  Josie has been talking about it for days.  Every person in her class signed up to bring in an item for the Thanksgiving feast.  Josie signed me up to bring in vegetables.  No problem.  We decided I'd roast cauliflower and then I warmed up some canned corn.  Apparently, in past years one family signs up to roast and bring in a turkey.  This year no one signed up (this is where it pays to have a vegetarian for a daughter 😉)  so four families roasted and brought in 6-8 chicken legs which pretty much had the same effect.  Marty and I volunteered to help set up and serve and clean up.  There were 4 or 5 student helpers who pretty much set up the entire classroom in a matter of minutes. 
When the rest of the class came in all the food was laying on the back table and the students, very orderly sat down at the long table set up in the classroom.  They came through the food line and served themselves buffet style Frau Shäfer runs a tight ship and the kids were so well behaved and respectful.  She has all the kids wait to eat until the very last student went through the buffet line.  The food was really good (volunteers got to have some of the left overs)  There was the chicken legs, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, various vegetables, cranberry sauce.  Really, everything was there minus stuffing and an actual turkey. 
After the kids finished eating Frau Schäfer took them all outside for a 15 or so minute recess while the parent volunteers cleaned up, washed the plastic plates (no wasteful paper plates here) and set out the dessert.  One of the dads brought in his wife's pumpkin pie which he pretty much kept in the back and served only to us parents.  Marty and I both agreed it was the VERY best pumpkin pie either of us has ever had.  Amazing.  So, that mixed with the cranberry sauce (my favorite) really made my day.  I will REALLY miss Thanksgiving up at Marty's sister's house.  For the past several years she has taken on doing the entire Thanksgiving feast and I honestly look forward to that meal all year long!  My mom is a great cook too and rivals, Liz, Marty's sister. But probably for the past 30 years I've always helped my mom with the cooking of the Thanksgiving meal and there is something about not having made any part of the meal that makes it taste that much better.  So...the classroom Thanksgiving feast was not quite the same and yet more than I thought I would get this year. 
And, what about Benjamin's class you might ask?  Well, I did too.

But I hadn't heard anything about his class doing a Thanksgiving feast.  I'm not sure if I just wasn't on the email list or if I thought it was for Josie's class and since he doesn't talk about stuff like Josie I had no idea that he had a feast too.  Clearly, I didn't send in any food because I didn't even know he was having one.  But then he comes home from school and I asked him if he had one and he said, oh, yeah.  Sure.  Every class has one, mom.  And he actually took a bus to a classmate's house and they had their feast there.  OK, I know, I'm not up on everything here the way I once was in Seattle and it really isn't that big of a deal but the fact that my 7 year old rode a bus and ate at someone else's house during his school day and I had NO idea still blows my mind.  No field trip form, no permission slip of any kind.  So crazy.  But they each had nice celebrations and both seemed particularly happy at school and with life in general today.  So for that I'm very thankful!! 
Tomorrow we fly out to visit our British friends, Chris, Ali, Will and Charlie.  We booked this flight within days of finding out that Benjamin got into JFK because it is the only school in Berlin that has vacation for the American Thanksgiving holiday.  I'm also thankful to get to see such fun friends and spend this time there with them. 
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!