Sunday, November 11, 2007

Autumn Events

Living on a tropical island does not lend itself well to autumn celebrations, so we are having to be a little creative to teach the kids about fall, harvest and thanksgiving.
It all began when Elijah saw a picture of a jack-o-lantern on one of his cartoons. Since we are far away from all things American, we felt at liberty to embellish a bit regarding normal jack-o-lantern traditions. Now Elijah and Anna think that carving a pumpkin is the first step in roasting a pumpkin for pumpkin pie. This served the double purpose of satisfying both Elijah's craving for a carved pumpkin, and our craving for pumpkin pie!



We have decided to celebrate Thanksgiving all month really since we didn't realize just how much pumpkin comes from a medium sized jack-o-lantern.


It was enough, for 2 pies, a cake, a batch of pancakes and a large serving of what I told the kids was pumpkin sauce. (Kind of like applesauce, but with pumpkin.)



We also spent our family fun day, (Our day of rest for the entire family with nothing but fun and hanging out with each other,) decorating the house. Thanks to my mom and some really nice guests who brought us some decorations from the States. It really helped to make our house feel more like home. Elijah is now even saying that he wants to be a "pillow-gram" when he grows up. Took us about an hour to figure out that he was trying to say pilgrim.





















We tried to turn everything into quality time, so the kids even got to help wash the dishes. So far, they still think this is a treat since they get to get covered in soap bubbles and drenched to the skin!














We ended the day with reading David and Goliath (Elijah's favorite) only to discover that Elijah had really taken the story a little bit differently than we had hoped. He wanted to be Goliath. When we went to check on him after he was asleep, we discovered that he had fallen asleep with his "sword and shield" aka a plastic playdough knife and Anna's toy teapot.