Images from Thanksgiving

Although I can’t post a lot of the pictures I took during Thanksgiving, which we spent with friends this year, because they are of kids that are not mine and I don’t have a release, here are a couple pictures:

This is the small kids table. We dined at three tables: grown ups, big kids (age 10-13 or so) and small kids (ages 1-5). Sarah snarfed down her food. Noah was more interested in the special sippy cup with a straw attached.

After lunch the preschoolers played a rousing game of doctor/hospital. The girls were the doctors, and the boys were the patients. Here is the ever compliant Mr. Independent Destructoman as he waits for medical attention.

To fully appreciate the next pictures you have to understand that in Dr. Pediatrician’s family there is a tradition on Thanksgiving to make a very special dish of rice pudding layered with the most delicious raspberry sauce ever. It is beautiful in the bowl, and tantalizing to the tongue, even though it is a TON of work to make. This year’s batch turned out perfectly. I wish I had remembered to take a picture of it before we left. Anyway, an almond is hidden in the salad, and whoever gets the almond on their plate and finds it while chewing the salad wins a dorky little prize. We explained the tradition to our friends, but because there was SO much food, little rice pudding was eaten and the almond was not located during lunch. The bigger kids had seconds later, but the almond was still not found. While the grown ups were sitting in the living room someone heard the bigger kids whispering about an almond. I came around the corner and found THIS!

The three of them were dissecting the pudding! Goodbye careful layers! It was just hilarious. They were so completely intent on finding that almond, they were using every kitchen utensil they could find and digging away. They dumped the pudding into cups and squished it around. They dumped the cups onto paper plates and mashed around with forks. No almond. Finally one of them got so desperate he tried this:

His mother discovered him and was MORTIFIED. I haven’t laughed so hard for a long time! Even though my tongue is sad there are no salvagable leftovers, the memories were fantastic. No one ever did find the almond after all that work, so we gave the prize, a blinking Rudolf Reindeer nose to our host.