More on our Thanksgiving Break

We spent a few days during the break trying to work up some ideas for the kids' science fair projects. As the school made it mandatory for grades 3-6 this year, we have no choice on whether we want to participate or not. We were not thrilled about it. On top of that, the project is due before the Christmas break this year instead of after, so we have a lot less time to work on it.

We spent Thanksgiving at my brother's house this year. Christian made a ton of his wild rice and onion bread. I made pies and the girls helped me make mashed potatoes. We usually celebrate Thanksgiving with a potluck style meal. All the siblings take part of the meal and my mom makes her traditional sticky rice. We call it our  chinese stuffing as no one in my family cares much for traditional stuffing except for my brother in law.

We actually had Thanksgiving lunch since my sister had big plans with her in-laws for dinner at her house. We went to visit with Christian's friends who had their baby the week before so that we can meet the new baby and play with his feet.

We basically skipped dinner since we were still full from lunch!

We went to the Quarry again Friday morning for a short time. It rained lightly on and off so we couldn't do much but the kids love just walking around in the rain. The rock is pretty slippery when it gets wet but we managed to do a little climbing still.

On Saturday, we met up with Marian and her sister for a service project of hers. They have been volunteering each year to provide and serve a meal at the local shelters. The one we went to was called the Door of Hope. It is a faith based family shelter where they house and help struggling families get back on their feet.

Since Thanksgiving just passed and we are coming upon Christmas, we thought that it might be a great idea to take the girls so that they can see how much they have and should be thankful for while learning to give service to others.

I don't know how much of that they got from the experience. It was a little frustrating because it was chaotic. The kitchen was being remodeled so we had no where to work (and they did not inform Marian of this situation). The girls got to actually help cook and serve some of the food.

After serving the families, we sat down and ate with them. Even though the families are supposed to be struggling, we still saw them wasting about half of the food. Well, that's not exactly right, they ate most of the desserts (of which there was plenty). Meanwhile, we made our kids sit quietly and eat what they took and didn't really have room for dessert. The other kids were so noisy that Caitlyn was complaining that her head hurt as the screams echoed through the house.

There were a couple of genuinely grateful families there that enjoyed the food we provided and said that it was the best meal they had all week. We made spiral sliced ham sandwiches and tri-tip sandwiches with coleslaw and mashed potatoes. Plus we had all sorts of cookies, cake and pie for dessert. I guess considering the fact that Thanksgiving was two days ago, that is pretty good.

But all things considered, it's difficult to feel that we made much of a difference for those people or for our children.