Thanksgiving

Two weeks for, my family and I celebrated Thanksgiving together. My mom and I spent all day working on dinner in the kitchen. Together, we made pumpkin pie, apple pie, green bean casserole and of course, the turkey! Rudi bought an 18 kilo turkey, that's about 40 pounds. It wouldn't fit into the oven so we had to take it to a Restaurant and they cooked it for us. It was soooo good! We ended up eating turkey for the lunch and dinner the next two days but that's ok haha :). We also made Rotkohl (red cabbage?), and knoedeln (dumplings-so good!). The whole day while we worked together, I talked about what we do in the U.S and I realized then how important Thanksgiving actually was to me. I talked about how it's a day where all of our friends and our families come togehter, just to be together and be thankful. In previous years, Thanksgiving had just been another holiday in the year where we would eat a bunch of food and watch football. But when you have to explain to a person who doesn't have that tradition, you really find out what it means to you. It was an amazing evening with my family. There were 22 of us all together and we talked and talked and laughed until late at night. Like in the U.S, the adults stayed at the table talking and the kids went off to play. We all played Wizard, our favorite card game. It was so much fun adn we laughed and smiled so much. We were all sad when it was time for everyone to go, too. Afterwards, Corinna told me what a wonderful evening it had been and I could only agree. She said that everybody had never stayed so late before. I found that to be almost magical in a way. Thanksgiving's not a day to be running around the house, stressed and rushing to get everything prepared for a meal. It's about the time we spend togehter, sharing our lives and what we're thankful for. And it's about the love we show for each other. I hope my families knows how much I love them and how much they mean to me. My German family didn't have to celebrate Thanksgiving, they did it because of me and that was amazing. I have so much to be thankful for!