Thanksgiving

Last week was a Thanksgiving week which meant we had a chance again to be part of an American traditional holiday and also had some time off from work.

Thursday was the actual Thanksgiving Day which has a mixture of historical and modern meanings, starting from the early pilgrims being helped by Indians, to different religious purposes, to celebrate the harvest, and all the way to modern "let's-just-eat-A-LOT-and-be-together-with-family-and-friends" sort of thing. Thanksgiving is the biggest travelling holiday for American people, since families and friends gather together to celebrate this day and enjoy the holiday. We traveled just a few dozens of miles and spent the Thanksgiving with our American family and friends.

We were invited to our coworker Mimi’s and her family’s house to spend this evening with plenty of other people we knew, and enjoy great food. Mimi had created a huge amount of delicious Thanksgiving dishes and we all brought some additional food as well. 

For appetizers we had cheese and crackers, some fruits and vegetables. Then the plates were filled with strawberry green salad, mushed potatoes, green bean puff pastry, potato-carrot-beet-gratin, and of course, the turkey with its stuffing with gravy and cranberry sauce. Piia made some Karelian pies with egg butter and blueberry cake for dessert to introduce some Finnish holiday dishes also. We also had traditional pumpkin pie for dessert with pumpkin butter cheesecake bits. Everything tasted amazing and after seconds we were all full and happy, and very thankful! It was very nice to part of that holiday and part of that group of great people!

 Piia and baking morning

Kerry, Mimi, Sarka, Sandra and Julien waiting for food

 

Sandra and Kerry

 Lots of good food

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Mimi, the hostess, and Sandra

 Scott and the king of the Thanksgiving dining table: The Turkey, and the stuffing

 Kids' meal

 Kids' table: Sierra, Evie, Juliana, Keats, Lucy and Cassidy

 Adults' turn: Todd and Sandra, the host Jason and his brother Jeff

Sarka, Julien and Scott

Adults' meal

 Hanging around

When we were driving home that night we found out we can be very thankful for our old Subaru still breaking like a charm. After one curve we faced with what seemed to be a wall moving calmly across the road. It ended up being a moose cow, which by the way are significantly bigger here comparing to their Scandinavian cousins. Julien was breaking and doing what he could and finally the car stopped. This didn't disturb the moose one bit, but the calf following her was moving a bit faster. We witnessed the wonders of nature once again, and wonders of good reflexes and breaks.

Friday following Thanksgiving is called Black Friday that starts the consumption madness towards Christmas and means the stores are full of sales and crazy people. We didn’t think we would need anything but still wanted to witness all that craziness so we headed town on Friday. The sales were actually pretty good, and the stores we visited weren’t too full so we ended up finding plenty of usefull stuff: a tripod for our camera, Carhart working bib for Piia, Bunny boots and warm underwear for Julien, and candy. We avoided going to the craziest places so Black Friday wasn’t so bad for us. Of course our bank account took a hit, so we will spend December eating just pasta...