Second Thanksgiving in the Bush

Another Thanksgiving in Alaska has come and gone. And would you believe it...I didn't take a single photo. Not one. Which, upon looking back on our holiday occasions, our Thanksgivings have historically been the least documented. When the primary photographers are busy cooking, I suppose that makes sense. Therefore, I'm glad I'm writing this blog so that we can still recount the day, even though we have no photos to look back on.

Once again, living out here, our day was very relaxed. Philip and I were up early to start smoking the turkeys (yes, we had two this year), so Philip and I enjoyed our usual morning cup of coffee, taking in the frosty view outside. One by one, the kids awoke, and so we turned on the projector to tune in to the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. I've been watching the parade for as long as I can remember, and I still think it has gotten far too heavy on the commentary and interviews, but it's still fun to make our own commentary, as a family. And we still get a juvenile thrill when Santa makes his debut at the end, falling back on my mom's tradition that his appearance condones all Christmas movie watching, decorating and festivities.

Throughout the parade, we continued to make our traditional dishes. Philip was in charge of the meat; Emily made the corn casserole; Avery made the green bean casserole; Josh and I made the sweet potato casserole. Which brings me to our first amusing (hindsight) anecdote of the day. Every Thanksgiving, Philip makes cinnamon rolls from scratch, something we all look forward to. As a part of that process, he had put the dough in the oven to rise. In order to get a head start on the sweet potato casserole, Josh and I decided to go ahead and cook the potatoes, while the oven wasn't in use. Ever since The Magnet Debacle of 2011, when Jadyn and Emily were preschoolers (*see the end of this post), I ALWAYS check the oven before preheating. Always. And yet, for some reason, this particular morning, I did not. Josh was prepping the potatoes, and the oven had been warming for about 5 minutes, when Philip yelled out, and ran to open the oven door. Sure enough, the towel he had placed on top of that delicious cinnamon roll dough, was on the verge of catching fire. He grabbed some pot holders, and pulled the bowl of dough out to examine the damage. I felt terrible. The rag was charred, and I felt sure that I had killed the dough. Philip could tell I was upset, even though I was trying to make the best of it, and he reassured me that it would be fine...that I didn't just ruin our traditional breakfast. I let Josh finish out the potatoes, and walked off to the bedroom.

I did not expect the tears that began falling from my eyes, and I was seriously questioning how a common kitchen mishap could evoke such emotion. Then of course, the answer came immediately. It wasn't really about the dough. It was a combination of things, one of which is still feeling like I sometimes struggle in being a supportive wife. I've learned that due to a combination of my introverted nature, as well as being raised as an only child, I have a tendency to live deep in my head, and can be quite oblivious to the situations of others. And Philip operates very differently than I do. The man never stops. I don't know if he really knows how to relax. I, on the other hand, am quite good at taking the path of least resistance, and can spend more time thinking and feeling, rather than taking action. So when I make a mistake, like preheating the oven when Philip's dough is supposed to be gently rising in it, it processes as I'm oblivious to the work he's put in, and plunge ahead with my thing instead. The other notable factor contributing to my emotional response was that I was really missing Jadyn. I knew this first holiday apart was going to be hard, but it still hit me. So of course, my emotions were on edge. It doesn't help that I also have a strong tendency to spiral downward when I make a mistake, and everything that could be considered a negative moves to front and center in my mind. It taints the most mundane of circumstances or events, and if I don't take control quickly, it gets ugly. A self-admitted truth. Once again, talking with Philip helps me put things in their realistic perspective, and goes to show the importance of having a reliable voice that's outside our own heads. Needless to say, I recovered, and headed back in the kitchen to pick up where I'd left off.

The parade finished out, and our spectating shifted to our other tradition, the National Dog Show. Truth be told, I think it's obscene how much money is spent on the breeding, training and grooming of those dogs. But it's still fun for us to try to guess which breeds will be selected by the various judges, and which breed will win Best in Show. We read the judges as much as we watch the dogs. We were quite disappointed that this year's winner was the pug. Bleh.

It was during this time, that while I was relaxing in the living room, watching the show, I heard a crash in the kitchen, and Philip yell out in surprise and pain. I got up to see what had happened, only to see Philip bent over the oven, and Emily up on a chair, a look of confusion on her face. She had been reaching up on top of the cabinet for some cans of corn, and had almost dropped them on Philip. They didn't actually hit him, but his jolting to grab them tweaked his usual trouble spot in his back. After making sure he was okay, I looked on the counter next to the stove, where the sweet potato casserole that Josh and I had made was still cooling. I said, "Well, at least you didn't drop a can in the casserole!" No sooner had I said that, but another can comes crashing down, bouncing off my hand and landing squarely in the casserole. Emily just stared at me, with a look of suspended trepidation, waiting for my reaction. All I could do was laugh. I lifted the can out, and decided to leave the ring-shaped dent it left behind.

For dinner, it was our family of five, plus our two other staff members. We ended up having two turkeys, the dishes the kids made, homemade cranberry sauce (made from the highbush cranberries I harvested earlier in the season), stuffing, Philip's yeast rolls, and pumpkin and bourbon pecan pies for dessert. It was a cozy and quiet meal, much like last year, with the usual chaos of 30 plus people being notably absent. It was rather peaceful. I really enjoy how the kids are a lot more involved now in the prepping and cooking of the meal, and as such, have come to appreciate the energy it takes to bring the meal together. And the day outside was beautiful. The whole landscape displayed various shades of white, gray and blue, with the temperature staying around -25 degrees. I was also grateful that Jadyn ended up spending Thanksgiving with a friend of her suite mate's there in Juneau, so she wasn't alone for the holiday.

The following couple of days were spent decorating the house with the meager collection of decorations that we have. Decorating definitely goes much faster in our small abode, which is actually rather nice. Of course, our favorite part is the finding of our tree. Like last year, we ventured into the woods by our house, in search of Bob the XX. At this time, most of the bears are hibernating, but we do still have moose, wolves and wolverines that we have to watch out for. In our experience so far, they're really good at avoiding us, but we take the gun and knives just in case. And with all the snow, the dark tree trunks will play tricks on your eyes. Also, finding the right tree for us is actually kind of difficult because we have to find a small tree that will actually fit in our house, and we have to find one that hasn't been pummeled by the heavy snow and ice.

So, after walking around for close to an hour and a half, we found a tree we liked. Last year, we chose a small tree. This year, we took a different route, and chose a rather tall one, whose bottom limbs had been removed by wildlife. We weren't sure how it would pan out, but the limb structure looked good, and more importantly, our toes were starting to go numb. So per tradition, everyone had their turn chopping the tree.

(Fair warning: Don't forget to remove the snow before you begin to chop...)

Philip finished it off, and everything looked good until the tree decided to fall the opposite direction, and landed on Avery! Fortunately, this wasn't a very large tree, and she chose wisely when she decided to stand and take it, rather than jump backward, which would have sent her rolling down a rather steep cliff towards the frozen river below. Definitely a more hair-raising experience than any of our tree farm trips of yore!

Here's the tree chopping footage:

We carried the tree back home, through the woods, and began to cut off what we needed to make it fit. Then we commenced on our other tree farm tradition: BBQ. Philip had smoked a brisket earlier, and we also had homemade potato salad, beans, cornbread, and homemade buttermilk pie. It was a legitimate contender for the meals we used to get at Southside Market in Elgin, a great way to replenish our energy from our trek in the cold. After dinner, we jumped back into finishing the tree, making a base for it this year using an old Swiss Miss hot chocolate container, which is fitting for our family. Then, we put on all the decorations we made and received last year, including our little wooden star tree topper. The girls and I also strung popcorn again to add to the garland, a tradition I've come to love. We sit and talk about past Christmases, laugh over past humorous family adventures, and try not to stick our thumbs with the needles as we thread the popcorn. Emily also worked on her design for this year's Christmas card contest for the school district. She's gotten rather good with her artwork, and I love seeing the ideas she comes up with.

Bringing home Bob!

Frosty faces

My face...is frozen.

Emily's card design

So...here's the final picture of our mostly decorated tree:

We plan to make some gingerbread ornaments this year, as well as a few other crafts, but this is our Bob the XX. It's okay. You can say it. Our tree is a bit....disproportionate. It has a small head and a fat body, with not a lot of tapering in between. In fact, it reminds us of the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, that started as a twig, and then was filled in with a lot of help. But, we love it all the same. And now that the weather has warmed up a bit, we'll venture into the woods once more to find the boughs to make our wreath for the door. We really are enjoying our wintry woodland Christmases, with the quiet, rustic scenery and slow pace of life. I've also enjoyed the guarantee of having a white Christmas, after years of Texas weather toying with my emotions!

We're also excited now that Jadyn's flight information has been confirmed. She'll be coming home in two weeks, and she's already requested which Christmas movies we have to wait to watch with her. Of course, Die Hard is on that list. Ems, Josh and Ave have also dutifully set aside her treats from the Advent house, for her to enjoy when she gets here. We are more than ready for Christmas break, and I know the next three weeks are going to fly.

Forrest does not like negative temps!

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*The Magnet Debacle of 2011: When Emily and Jadyn were 3 and 5 years old respectively, they used to imaginatively play together a lot. Most of the time, they liked to play house. As a part of that play, they would pretend to make concoctions in the kitchen. One of those concoctions involved using a set of ball and stick magnets they had to make a casserole of some kind. In the midst of their pretend play, they put their "casserole" in a metal bowl, and then put it in the oven to bake (without turning it on, of course). Naturally, they forgot about it and hours later, they had moved on to something else. I, on the other hand, unaware of their plastic-metallic concoction sitting within, preheated the oven for that evening's pizza dinner. I then left to go do something else. When I returned to the kitchen, I was greeted by a thick plume of black smoke streaming up from the oven, and spreading along the kitchen ceiling. In a panic, I opened the oven door, and tried to process the colorful, molten mess that lay before me. Grabbing some oven mitts, I quickly relocated it to the backyard, and then set about to collect eye witness statements from the household. From that day on, the lesson that was learned was mostly followed: always check the oven before preheating.