Thanksgiving is just around the corner and I’m giddy! For the first time in what seems like forever, I will have the day after Thanksgiving off! Yay, for one more day to spend with my boys. {Daddy will be working ~ Boo!} It will be a day to decorate and craft with the fire roaring and our jammies still on – Wee!!! When I think about my boys and the age they’re at, I remember back to my own Thanksgivings as a child…and not that I didn’t know already who I inherited my overachiever gene from, but the night before Thanksgiving certainly is signature moment.
My mom would be peeling and chopping the potatoes, turnips and squash.
Cleaning the house.
Setting the table.
Decorating and preparing for 25 or so guests.
And my brother, sister and I would rush the kitchen and beg to make Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies.
Back then, yes I’m using the phrase “back then”…I must be getting old, but back then you couldn’t buy pre-made cookie dough. We wanted to make cookies and the only method was one that required mixing the dry ingredients in a medium mixing bowl and the wet ingredients in a large mixing bowl. We would need baking soda, a pinch of salt, white sugar, brown sugar, eggs, butter, which needed to be softened, but not melted. There was vanilla to be added. And the whole, gooey, mixture needed to be blended carefully with a fork as you slowly added the dry ingredients or else, it was big pain in the butt to mix. And every year when we asked my mom if we could make cookies… she said, “Yes”. Never did she get flustered or annoyed. She would let us make the biggest stinkin’ mess in that kitchen on the night that she needed the kitchen the most. My mother is a living Saint, I am sure of it.
I definitely inherited her ability to juggle, but not so much the endless patience. Honestly, I don’t remember my mother ever raising her voice to me, well, expect when I was a teenager and stumbled in way past my curfew. I’m sure there were times that she must have lost her patience, but I suppose those memories are washed away with things like baking cookies on Thanksgiving eve, handmade costumes on Halloween and the endless amount of time that she spent with us. She was never too busy, never too overwhelmed, just always ready to do whatever needed to be done. And maybe that is why I try to do so much. I want to smother my boys in good memories of glitter covered tables & sticky fingers from making cards. Or from paint covered clothes because we painted a mural inside their tree fort. Or because of pricked fingers from teaching them how to sew their very own mushroom stuffies. I want all of the fun stuff to squish out any trace of me ever making my voice loud or being short tempered. I want them to rush the kitchen while I’m peeling potatoes, well, I’m not giving them the idea, but let’s just say it if they did, it would make me smile.
And so, the other day when I was out shopping for all of the Thanksgiving fixings, I grabbed a bag of Toll House Morsels and tossed them into the cart!
Happy Thanksgiving!
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