A Very Nice Thanksgiving

We had a very nice thanksgiving dinner with our guests (Sophia, Niels Olof, Susanne, and Jonas) just shy of two weeks ago.

Leysia set a very nice table, as you can see below...





... and did a very good job of cooking all the traditional Thanksgiving dishes, including a turkey, that Susanne very kindly carved for us! Here's a shot of Leysia in the kitchen.



Lilja was there, of course, and was looking forward to her role as hostess and goodwill ambassador to the visiting Danes who, in general, don't know about Thanksgiving but are happy to show up to drink wine and eat good food! :-)



Lilja became less happy, however, when Papa was asked to put tights on her. "Tights are for little girls!" seemed to be her attitude.



Here's a shot of Max enjoying the festivities while the mashed potatoes (a big hit!) were being passed around.



The evening was successful as everyone left the table claiming they felt stuffed, especially after Leysia passed around dessert (another big hit!) which consisted of a cup of chocolate-covered almonds and pumpkin pie served with crème frâiche. (All of this served with Leysia saying how she's just an "average" cook. Yeah, sure.)

Finally, the kids were excited because I set out the four christmas calendars that Leysia and I had bought for them (two each) and then Susanne brought them an additional calendar each (six total) in preparation for Jul (Christmas).








Two of the calendars are synched with shows on TV. Each day they open up a new part of the calendar that reveals some important aspect of the story that will occur during the episode for that day. This year's shows are called Bamses Julerejse (Bamse's Christmas Trip) and Jul i Valhal (Christmas in Valhalla) and Max and Lilja are enjoying watching both shows. (The shows are in Danish, of course, and Lilja and Max don't quite understand everything, but they seem to understand enough that they are excited to watch the shows each day.) The other (four) calendars are ones that each day provide a different type of candy or a piece of chocolate and, of course, the kids just LOVE this holiday tradition. :-)

Anyway, our thanksgiving celebration was a lot a fun and we now look forward to celebrating Christmas here in Denmark.

Ken