Thankful Turkey 2015

Our Thanksgiving tradition is to fill up a jar that is decorated in turkey fashion.  We fill it up over the course of November with little papers on which we write things we are grateful for.  Then we read the entries and sometimes try to guess who wrote what.  Here are this year's entries:

Toys
Bed
house
pets
water
bed
holidays
I'm thankful for mountains, trees, waterfalls, wide-open fields, lakes, flowers, berries, vegetables, the ocean, and autumn leaves.
Cats, "kittys", "kittins"
Mama
I'm thankful for SpongeBob
my life
I'm thankful for Cinder, Rocket, and Patch.  They are good animals who give lots of affection.  I'm also thankful for Patrick.
I am grateful for everything.
I'm thankful for farms.
pilgrims. May "Flour", holidays
I am grateful for the wild turkeys just down our road.  I enjoy seeing them- a flightless flock- running oddly across the road on my way to work.  They remind me of the beauty of the country.
I'm thankful for zzzzz, (drawing of a bus), (drawing of a chicken drumstick??), (drawing of possibly a salt shaker), (drawing of a book)
I'm grateful for my kids: Nolan for the way he perceives needs and cares, Gerret for his goofy ways -always helping us laugh and feel better, Auburn for being my princess and just loving life.
I'm "grateful" for my "cosy" bed and my cats.
I'm grateful for 5 years in our little green house and for all of the memories we've made in it.
I'm thankful for Dad.
I'm grateful for Mama.
I'm thankful for all of the kind and loving people who have helped our family and Grandma&Grandpa this year.  And I'm grateful for Patrick the Boy.
I am grateful for Patch, who goes outside with me in the dark to tend the chickens.
I am grateful for my best friend.  I am grateful for her smile and her laugh.  I am grateful for her kind voice and gentle ways.  And, above all, I am grateful that she chose me as her best friend.
I'm thankful for Thanksgiving.
I am grateful for warm crackling fires in our new stove.
Christmas and food
I'm thankful for my parents.  I have had such a good life largely thanks to them,  I treasure so many memories with them.  They have taught me and continue to teach me how to do and to be.
the howling wind and my boy, Patrick.
I am thankful for Mama's laugh,  Especially when she says "Bwah ha!"
I'm thankful for Jesus.
I am grateful for my mom and my loving family.
I'm grateful for the way Patch always looks like he's smiling.
I'm grateful to play the uke and piano and sing.  I love the sound of the cello.  Music is one of my most favorite things in the world.  And Patrick, my boy.

Mitchells Go West: Day One

On the first morning, we left our home around 7 and dropped Patch off at a friend's kennel on our way.  That day we travelled through the rest of New York, a smidgen of Pennsylvania, all of Ohio, an hour or two of Indiana, and stopped for the night in a suburb of Chicago.  Finding ourselves in Chicago and met with our abiding hunger for good pizza, we knew we had to find some famous deep dish. After a Google search for "Chicago's best pizza", we found ourselves in an outpost of Lou Malnati's, mouths drooling, stomachs rumbling over the rich smell.

It turns out Chicago's deep dish, while interesting and deliciously fragrant, left my hankering for pizza largely unsatisfied.  Maybe it's ridiculous to say this in the MidWest, but there was too much corn in that tall, flat crust. Besides, the sauce to cheese ratio was off and the sausage was one piece the size off the pie, hiding out somewhere under the sauce and cheese.  It was strange.  I went to bed and dreamed of large slices of New York pizza heavily laden with every scrumptious topping my mind could conjure.

Patrick reading to the kids in the Illinois hotel:

Mitchells Go West

We like to travel. We're known to pack up the car and head out on the interstate, covering large swaths of country or coast, watching the landscape slowly mold into wild new forms, those forms taking on new colors and new uses.  Discovery and adventure are the staples of our family's diet. Without them, we perish. 

And so it should come as no surprise that when the news came of my sister-in-law's upcoming marriage to take place some 2,000 miles to the west in Utah, our first and last inclination was to make out of it a road trip and a grand exploration. East to West.  South.  Then West to East and North again.