Our traditional Thanksgiving is delayed by a few days, while the boys are out of town visiting Neil's family.  Our attempt at economizing was to use the two frequent flier tickets we had.  So our dining room was strangely silent on Wednesday afternoon.  No sign of an impending Thanksgiving in sight.

It was time for some action.  So the girls and I are having N.Y.O.T (Not Your Ordinary Thanksgiving, (pronounced nyaht)).  My goal is to make the girls NOT miss visiting Grandma and Grandpa and their cousins too much, and to have some fun of our own.  Hence N.Y.O.T was created.

After visiting the grocery store to pick out our interesting N.Y.O.T. feast…which I'll cover later, we settled in for the evening.  We started with a crafting feast late last night, where I pulled out this and that for them to create with.  Now my table was set – if not in the traditional way!

And the girls made lovely crafts.

Ms. Laura even joined us for a while!  Which was a wonderful surprise.  Plus, she brought an ice cream treat.  I think the puppy is even more excited about her visits and wanted to go home with her.

This morning, the girls put on an impromptu Pilgrim Play.  Courtney was the Indian Princess and Brianna was a Pilgrim Girl.  Somehow this turned into me giving each of them a dollar to go shopping at the Pilgrim settlement?

But how can I turn down those faces?  And I have no idea where this concept came from, but they decided to have a French version of the play.  They pulled out their little 100 Words book, and had translated some of the items in the Pilgrim shop.

And then it suddenly turned into the Pilgrim and Indian Princess Cooking Show complete with banana cream pudding.  The smashing of bananas and tricky application of whipped cream were discussed.

And there was peace in the village so that the feast could begin.

I don't know what the rest of the day will bring, but the lunch feast includes Grape Uncrustables.  The dinner feast includes fish sticks, along with Courtney's favorite, Grandma Winnie's Corn 'Pudding'.  Is there a pudding theme going on here?

I hope you are having a creative day too.  Don't stress!  Just think of N.Y.O.T.  and have a joyous start to your holiday season.

Be merry.  SL