Thanksgiving with the Lymans

Grandma and grandpa Oregon have come over to meet Freya and celebrate her first thanksgiving. We had a traditional Turkey, stuffing, potato and sweet potato, but we added a kiwi twist of pavlova for desert. Freya didn't partake in dinner, but she did sit with us while we ate, before heading off to bed. She tried a bit of Turkey and mashed potato the next day.

Judy and Ralph have come over to New Zealand for a couple of weeks to get to know Freya and to see a bit more of the country that they didn't see last time. Freya has been enjoying playing with grandma. Freya has been learning to do a few new tricks, sitting up and transitioning from crawling to sitting and back again....we have had a few face plants as she got the hang of it. She has also pulled herself up a couple of times...but is still very wobbly on her feet, mainly because she tries to stand on one leg, or cross her legs. 

Playing with grandma Oregon 

Dancing with grandpa

We have had a couple of colds lately, but other than struggling to breathe at night she has been pretty happy during the day and continues to play hard as usual. 

6th Annual Kiwi Thanksgiving

Strong winds meant an indoor Thanksgiving this year

4.5kg of yum!

Thanks to: Sam, Barbara, Thomas, Elsa, Andrew, Dee, Olive, Leo, Reo, Greg, Clare and Andrew for sharing the day with us.

And of course Helen and Peanut for cooking up a storm.

Thanksgiving

The guest of honour

Dessert time!

Mifi checking out the stroller

Helen playing LEGO with Elsa, Thomas and Olive

Thanksgiving

The guest of honour - 7.85kg of yum!

Safi was constantly underfoot

Tui in the flax

The Marlborough Daisies have started to flower

Thanksgiving

Yesterday we had our annual Thanksgiving party. Helen claims that I only have the parties so that I can eat turkey and judging by the whole three pictures I took it would be pretty easy to believe her.

The guest of honour, all 6.8kg of him.

There were people there too. All up I think we had 15 adults and 6 children. Most of the younger children busied themselves with my collection of Lego blocks and the older ones took turns swinging in and climbing on my hammock. The adults chatted away and kept eyes on children.

It was a beautiful day with a slight southerly which meant we were able to open up all the doors. Sadly the back wasn't finished in time, so we didn't have as much room to spread out as we would have liked. It will be great for the rest of summer though.

Helen cooked the turkey, stuffing and a giant pot of mashed potatoes and everyone contributed a plate of something. If anyone asked me what to bring I told them dessert as it is my favourite. So we had quite a few to choose from.

Helen cooked a pumpkin pie from an actual pumpkin and a pavlova as well for a Kiwi twist.

House warming and Thanksgiving

This weekend we celebrated Thanksgiving by having a housewarming. The house isn't finished - but it will probably be another 6 months before it is completely done and after a successful Thanksgiving last year I braved cooking another turkey (although it isn't the easiest thing to get hold of in New Zealand at this time of year). So we had turkey and stuffing, but it is the middle of summer so we mixed it with a range of salads. For desert we had traditional pumpkin and pecan pie and of course pavlova!! A real mix of American and New Zealand cultures.

The star of the day

The weather was perfect to show off the house. It was the perfect day, sunny, warm, with a very light breeze. We completely opened up the house and set up the hammock out the back so that the kids could play. Aaron also very graciously allowed them to play with his lego... but he is now rather traumatised as they mixed arctic lego with space lego - outrageous!

Aaron and Mifi testing the hammock

It was a great day with far too much food..... in the true spirit of Thanksgiving. Thank you everyone who came to share it with us.

The day after we even managed to get out for a bike ride to help burn off all the yummy food.

Thanksgiving

Aaron had a craving to have turkey and a proper Thanksgiving this year (he hasn't had Thanksgiving for >5years). Unfortunately we don't get thanksgiving off as a public holiday and when it takes a couple of hours to cook a turkey we would have been eating at midnight. So we cheated slightly and had a little celebration on Saturday instead. The weather was even appropriate - grey, cool and rainy! Excellent weather for spending half the day cooking and then eating lots!

We bought a small turkey (7lbs), then we invited a few people over to help Aaron eat it. I was a little worried that it wasn't going to be defrosted in time and then it wasn't going to be cooked. I did some research on the web before hand and had about 5 different sets of instructions and then modified them to suit. It turned out just fine and fortunately we invited our friend Carolyn who wasn't scared to carve/attack it! I even made stuffing and gravy to go with it. We then finished the meal off with pumpkin pie and brownies. An almost perfect thanksgiving feast - apart from the fact that it was on Saturday.

However, our friends didn't do a very good job of eating the turkey - so Aaron will have a lot of turkey sandwiches to eat in the next week!