Pre-Thanksgiving Gratitude

We started the day off with a trip to the EcoTarium. As expected, being the day before Thanksgiving there were not a lot of families there for the preschool story hour. The topic was, appropriately, turkeys! D loved the stories and got to hold some turkey feathers. We also got ot visit with the resident screech owl. We couldn't stay long today, but D enjoyed the air tunnel. This was a fan placed at the base of a vertical plexiglass column. The column was about 6 feet tall set about 2.5 feet off the floor. There were a variety of items to choose from to send flying up through the wind; feathers, ribbon, paper, styrofoam, and paper cups. Some flew up and out of the column while others didn't make it more than 2 or 3 feet up in the column. D was fascinated by this and we spent about a half an hour with the exhibit. He was jumping up and down with excitement, laughing and sreaming with delight. He worked up quite a sweat! On the way home we had a fairly involved conversation wondering why some of the items flew higher and took longer to come back down to the ground.

Once home, we were soon joined by D's dad and started Thanksgiving meal prep for dinner tomorrow. Pumpkin and apple pies, stuffing and cranberry sauce. It was fun to have D's dad home early! Usually he gets home late, we have dinner and he puts D to bed. A few days a week I teach yoga so I'm not home for dinner. Then he gets on-line for his masters degree program until 2 or 3am. With the exception of Sundays, we don't usually have much free time together as a family. While the pies where in the oven I picked up pizza at a local place for dinner. Thanks goodness for the new gluten free menu newly offered by our local house of pizza! About a year ago we began to say "thank yous" before each meal we eat together. Tonight D had us go through several rounds of thank yous. The last one was particularly noteworthy. "I am thankful for the mushrooms on daddy's pizza even though I don't like them." While cute, it was rather profound. how often are we grateful for things we don't like because they make someone else happy?

Tomorrow we'll have a wonderful meal with friends and will enjoy making a Thanksgiving Tree . I love the idea I got in my Clickschooling newsletter this morning.