Giving Thanks
Note: Video in this post. Click through to watch at the website for best experience.
We were sorry to leave Mom and her cozy new house, but so excited to head to K.C. to spend time with The Chan Clan and to pick Buds up from the airport!
We left a day later than planned because we had the chance to visit Cash in the hospital and that was well worth it.
But, finally, it was time to head out.
We kept the drive leisurely, stopping at The Toot Toot for lunch on our way down.
Hey, Gina, does that picture bug you because it’s just slightly off-kilter? Sorry.
I think Toot Toot is an awesome name for a restaurant for one reason; It sounds like a family nickname we’d come up with.
My dad always called Long John Silvers “Fish and Dip.”
(I pulled two shots below from the LJS website for your viewing pleasure. No, they weren’t attempting to be funny.)
Or, as Monkey said when I showed her the above picture, “Let’s eat, Grandma!” (Commas save lives.)
Another gem from the LJS website:
Long John Silvers detour aside, I loved it when my dad would say, “Hey, Sniper, how ’bout we go to fish and dip for dinner?”
So, Toot Toot makes me smile.
We drop into life at The Chandler Casa pretty easily. Bless their hearts for putting up with us.
The basement is our sleeping compound. There’s always a jumble of kids and adults milling around, games to be played, conversations to be had. Gina chauffeuring people around while I tag along to get more time with her.
We got to see Hero at her job, for which she had just been hired at our last visit.
And her first-ever ATM card arrived, for her growing bank account!
One memorable conversation from this week together was begun by Henry’s question, “Which would you rather have in a battle to the death? A knife or a bat?”
He was incensed that any of us would even consider a bat as the correct answer.
A hysterical conversation with a vehement advocate for the knife, and yet, I’m still not sure where I stand on this age-old question.
A second “this will become a family joke” moment was when we were discussing the abortion laws in Missouri, as well as what adolescents could expect for privacy from their family doctor, etc. (Yes, that’s what we were discussing. We’re homeschoolers. You never know what we’ll be discussing.)
At about the point where the words “pregnancy” and “sex” were being tossed around, Yessa turned to Hero and Monet with a wild-eyed look and gasped, “I’m too young for this!”
We laughed till we cried.
Buds and I had a playful workout at a splendid new park near G & T’s place. (Much more about this park later.) Todd ran on the park loop while Buds and I played “follow the leader” all around the equipment.
As we were leaving the park we discovered someone forgot their peace pipe.
Curious.
In a later episode at that same park, we had a chilly, but fun walk with the kids:
Lots of great climbing and spinning on the equipment:
And in an effort to increase his functional fitness, Buds decided that climbing up the spider’s web…keeping his feet higher than his head…would be a taxing thing to do.
It was taxing. I almost had to be resuscitated from the oxygen deprivation from laughing so hard.
Gina and I watched in awe from a bit of a distance, but eventually I had to go up closer for a better view.
Alas, my view was not as striking as that of the father and son waiting patiently at the top of the structure to use the slide. I can only imagine their thoughts as Buddie’s butt came up through the ropes.
He succeeded.
Dignity discarded, but physical task accomplished.
And admire Buddie’s keister.
According to Buds, the other dad was very encouraging, and seemed to think the whole idea was brilliant.
Of course, this was also the dad who watched his son slide off a piece of playground equipment while he laughed.
Parenting…it takes a village.
On Thanksgiving Day the dads took the broods to a park within walking distance of T & G’s to pass the time before the bird was ready.
We haven’t even begun to talk about the meals. We had some great ones, not even counting Thanksgiving Dinner.
Todd was experimenting with a couple new recipes in their Instant Pot, and revisiting some tried and true ones.
He also made about 47 pounds of two different types of hummus. We weren’t able to finish it all, but it was good.
(Gina tried out a new tactic for cooking the turkey this year. It involved having the oven turn itself off partway through roasting. The turkey tasted fantastic, and none of us fell ill, so we do not get to refer to this as “The Year Gina gave all of us food poisoning.”
Catchy title, though.)
Buds and I made a pumpkin parfait from Lindsay’s website.
Henry had to leave for work at the movie theater at 4’ish, but we all managed to gather at the table to start eating before he headed out.
On another day, in which Henry was only away from the movie theater for about 4 hours, he willingly went to the movies with us to see Moana.
It was great!
Another day the moms took some of the brood ice skating.
This sign was posted at the rink:
Buds and Todd got to have some deeper Compulsion Discussion.
We have to mention Dr. Strange who kept butting into all our pictures. Because of his work in the movie industry, Henry often gets to bring home props from the promos at the theater. I loved how the Dr. looks like he’s so interested, but slightly disapproving of everything we did.
As always, our stay went too quickly. We headed for home on Saturday morning. No one forgot his shoes but one critical cable did manage to disappear. Pretty good for us.
Thanks for a blessedly wonderful week, Chan Clan.
