Thanksgiving Eve

I'm really excited about Thanksgiving. A day for being thankful, how awesome is that? I plan to spend the day focused on gratitude. Maybe we'll create some sort of tangible thing - I might steal an idea I heard about making a tree of thankfulness with gratitude leaves. Hmm, that would require some more autumny paper colors... A trip to the store might be in order later.

But first! I am getting the food prep in order. We have a giant turkey in the fridge, just waiting for some brining action. I've never cooked a turkey before in my life, but I'm guessing it will be hard to mess up this fresh pasture raised turkey. Plus, I'll have the help of my mom, who will also be putting together her mom's stuffing recipe in the morning before she comes over.

Today I'm going to make some cranberry sauce from the fresh organic cranberries we picked up at the Beaverton Farmers Market on Saturday. I have a big pumpkin to turn into puree for a pumpkin pie, and I'm going to make my first pecan pie ever. Yum.

Is it crazy that I'm already looking forward to the leftovers? Already looking forward to getting that turkey carcass into my stock pot? But much more than that, I'm looking forward to sharing a day of gratitude with my family and two wonderful friends that I was able to coax into spending the day with us.

Happy Thanksgiving Eve!

Halloween

I have always loved Halloween. I love autumn and falling leaves, I love spooky jack-o-lanterns and candles and eeriness. Half of me was looking very much forward to the kids experiencing Halloween, and the other half was unsure of the whole candy issue and how it would play out at our house.

Nate wants me to write that his favorite part was being with his friends, outside, trick or treating. It isn't every day that you can dress up and walk around outside with your friends after dark, knocking on everybody's door and being greeted with excitement and gifts. Pretty exciting stuff.

Vampire Nate and Tinkerbell Maya:



And the little Eli dog too:



The day after Halloween, the kids ate quite a bit of candy (for them; it is, of course, relative). In the evening we had some pretty serious sugar-crash fallout, especially with Maya who was an emotional wreck. The next morning, we offered them the opportunity to trade in their candy for a toy, and Maya was completely down with that. She and Nick took the mile-ish walk to the shops, she spent a long time deliberating and picked out a new toy (Rapunzel Barbie, a completely different kind of evil - but her hair changes color in cold and warm water so she was it). While they were gone, I disappeared her candy. She hasn't looked back.

Nate chose to keep his candy, and he agreed to only eat it when Maya isn't around in order to make it easier on her. We have found, however, that candy gives him a very short attention span, and he quickly forgets these promises.

From a homeschooling perspective, there have been a lot of learning moments. Lots of counting and sorting. Reading of labels. Discussing ingredients. Comparing and contrasting. Bartering and negotiating. And there has been a whole lot of discussion about how different things make us feel. Why do you think that chocolate makes you feel so thirsty? Notice how you feel really sad now, and an hour ago you felt so happy? It has been a pretty interesting experience/experiment.

I'm thinking we'll have to come up with something a bit better next year.

Come on now

Our stuff has been shipped! The kids' paperwork has been lodged! Our motorhome has been fixed and advertised, and we have have had two people come and look at it, and one coming on Monday. One of the two today looks very promising - he is in the process of looking at something like nine different motorhomes (some of them in Queensland) and he was really happy with ours out of the ones he has seen already. He should be, because ours is awesome (now that it's all fixed up).

So now it's just a waiting game.

Nick and I are keeping busy. We joined a local gym, along with the couple we're staying with, and we have all been going to the gym every day (not all together - I'm usually home with the kids while they go, and then I go alone which suits me perfectly). It feels great. I've also been eating really well, giving my body a bit of a clean out. I had a week of raw vegan, then today the kids and I had sushi for lunch. It was delicious. So were the (way too many) cookies I had afterwards. I realised that I have been too strict with myself. I don't have to eat ALL raw food ALL the time. If I don't have the occasional curry or sushi or cookie I'll go crazy and make up for it all in one sitting and then feel miserable. It does feel excellent to have so much actual nutrition in my diet though. How many people actually eat 5 servings of vegetables every day? I love Michael Pollan's advice: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

Byron Bay

We started out the day with a trip to our favourite beach - The Pass. It is amazing. Shade to sit in on the beach, or sun if that's your preference, and crystal clear turquoise water galore. It is very shallow for a good way out and the waves roll close to shore rather than breaking, making it an immensely kid-friendly beach. There are good waves as well if you paddle out, and abundant surfers. Loads of kid surfers and beginners closer in which gave us the idea of hiring a surfboard for the kids to have a go one of these days. They'll love it.

I love Byron Bay. I love that even the Woolworths supermarket is loaded with organic and local stuff, not just the specialty shops which are amazing. Yesterday we stopped by Byron Gourmet Pies and have had them for lunch for two days now. We stopped into Santos to buy a little snack of organic dark chocolate covered blueberries and organic dark chocolate spelt licorice. I want to pop into the Byron Bay Cookie Company shop while we're here. You can get anything worth eating in Byron Bay if you know where to look. Raw milk and cream, cane juice lightly flavoured with ginger and lime, raw cacao butter, local bananas. If you know me at all, you know that I love good food. There is LOADS of good food here.

We are lucky to have some friends in Byron, albeit temporarily. My friend Suzy is visiting and we are parked in her holiday house driveway. We're so grateful, because we are waaay overbudget (due largely to our internet dramas) and sleeping here means that we aren't paying to stay at a caravan park; there isn't a lot of free camping in the popular Byron Bay. It's just really easy to spend money here! I know though that as soon as we aren't on the east coast anymore, our expenditures will do right down. Except for fuel.