Thankful 4s 2020

 

Thanksgiving Appetizers with Gammy

 For extra caution, we have been seeing Gammy outside and physically distant. We decided to have mid-day appetizers with her this year instead of dinner, which worked out perfectly. We had planned on using the fire and porch heater, but it was a balmy 72 degrees and we did not need them:

We made deviled egg, goat cheese tartlets, pecan-cheese crackers, and pizza pinwheels

Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving 2020

 We had our traditional cheese plate, wine and fire. We also read some old favorite Thanksgiving stories:

Turkey Hands 2020

 

Fairfax High School Twins

 They get so excited when they accidentally match:

Putt-Putt Outing

 We've had some truly beautiful fall weather, way into the 70s, and decided to try out putt-putt on Saturday, which was a very successful outing (easy to pay, equipment sanitized, no one else on the course):

Family Piano Time

 One of our bucket lists items this month was for each family member to learn a song on the piano. This was trickiest for Kevin, who has never played piano, but Benji eagerly showed him the notes to learn a basic tune. He chose "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear," and Abby and I also chose Christmas songs. Benji wanted to learn a song from his Billy Joel sheet music, but eagerly started coordinating our performances for a show, in which he would play a clarinet duet of Jingle Bell Rock with Abby:

Family Coloring Night

 One of our bucket list items:

Ellie's Zoom Bat Mitzvah

 This is Benji's Bar Mitzvah year and, so far, all of the bar and bat mitzvot have been conducted by Zoom. Benji has happily attended them and he insists on dressing in his temple clothes for them:

Grandpa Steve's Visit

 Grandpa Steve came for a quick-ish visit (2 days) on his drive home from NY to Florida. It was great to have him here for a little bit. For Benji, the best part was clearly Grandpa Steve's 2 dogs, Kobe and Doxy:

Gammy and Posy

 Really, this cat just loves her:

Sunbeam

 He's like a cat glorying in the warmth:

Election: Pennsylvania Edition

 There are still a few cookies gettign stale on the counter waiting for recounts, but the kids excitedly split the Pennsylvania cookie on Saturday when it was finally called for Biden, giving him the election:

Election Night 2020

 Instead of coloring a map this year, we made a cookie for every state. It was a very last minute idea, but the kids were very enthusiastic about it so we went full steam ahead. Abby meticulously carved the initials into each cookie:

 

We tried to do a big election night spectacular, but time ended up being short and we ate mac and cheese, chips and dip and these star spangled sandwiches. Plus the cookies, which we originally thought we would frost red and blue but then decided to just eat as they were called.  And Benji kept track of the electors on a white board:

We were so nervous and tired or hearing the insipid commentary, we turned the whole thing off before 9 and sent the kids to bed, so it was not among our finest events this year.

Generations Project: Making Pretzels

 Benji's Language Arts project last week was to make something (cooked item, playlist, or art activity) with someone from a different generation and then write about it. He asked if I would do a kitchen project with him, and specifically he wanted to try to make pretzels again (he liked when we did that over spring break, but we thought we could do better):

Abby was eager to join us for part of this activity

Day of the Dead

 We watched Coco in the morning, which really did set the mood for celebrating Dia de Muertos. In the afternoon we decorated some skull cookies (and ate a few, but they were from a boxed kit and not really that tasty):

Halloween 2020

 Since Halloween fell on a Saturday and we would not be getting together with friends, we decided to plan an all-day family Halloween party:

Laying out the plan:

We started with a special breakfast of pumpkin pancakes, which Kevin made from scratch:

After breakfast, we worked on our costumes and decorated our little pumpkins:

At 1pm, we got on a Zoom with the Lamy-Petersons and Amy (with Katie), who served as the judge. We decided to go for the amusement factor and dressed up as them, much to everyone's delight:

After the contest, we had a quick lunch and watched It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, before heading outside to carve our jack-o-lanterns:

Early afternoon, we decided to try our hand at making caramel apples. Unfortunately, the recipe we chose required a candy thermometer, which we do not possess. We tried to wing it, but while the caramel tasted delicious, it dried hard on the apples with a consistency more like brittle.

After our baking fail, we decided to move to the carnival-like section of our day and play some fun Halloween-themed games, including spider toss, pint the tail on the spooky cat and witch's hat ring toss:

Posy saw us playing pin-the-tail on the cat and wanted to be a part of it all

Everyone's favorite turned out to be bobbing for apples. We all gave it a try, but only Kevin and Benji stuck their heads all the way in the tub and actually got apples:

Benji's first try failed, but after he saw Kevin do it by sticking his head all the way down, he wanted to try again

It started to get dark, so we moved inside for our last few games, which included trying to drop candy corn from our mouths into a small jar and racing to eat donuts off a string. In between we made a fun (but not photo-worthy) dinner of spooky appetizers and lit our jack-o-lanterns in the driveway so that trick-or-treaters could see them (we left candy out on a table at the end of our driveway):

Kevin's pumpkin

Abby's pumpkin

Benji's pumpkin

Ruth's pumpkins

Spooky donuts from Krispy Kreme

We ended the night with a family dance party:

Witch's brew punch

Disco lights