Thanksgiving me all your money

The title doesn't actually have very much to do with this post, its just a silly quote from the Office.

We had a huge party for thanksgiving. We had upwards of 50 people there. Weren't sure we would have enough food for everyone, but it turned out fine. My mother in law Maria and I put a lot of thought and work in to the food and the guest list. We cooked turkey and ham (my own personal thanksgiving tradition since I don't really like turkey). And we had candied yams, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, and many different choices of pie. Plus a few extras to such as rice. Overall, a very thanksgivingy kind of meal. It was yummy, and people ate or tried almost everything. So I felt it was a success.

During the planning process and during the festivities, there were a lot of discussions about the meaning behind thanksgiving and the traditions. With a name like thanksgiving, many people supposed it was a religious holiday and some even thought it was of LDS origin. I explained the basic history / myths behind it. But most people were unsatisfied with my insistence that it was all about the food. My family doesn't have a lot of traditions for thanksgiving outside of the meal, and spending time together. And this was very frustrating for my in laws I think. In the end, they just decided to derive their own meaning and traditions from the holiday. On some level, I felt a little offended at this, since its kind of my holiday. But I have decided that if they decide to take the holiday and make it their own, at least they took the important part of it, the gratitude part. I think they aren't really able to appreciate the food part for a few reasons: One, they don't really like the traditional food; Two, the whole idea behind a harvest festival doesn't really apply here. In Bolivia, you can harvest food almost all year round. That isn't true in many other parts of the world, including the States. So at the one harvest time a year, we have festivals and parties. We have songs about the harvest, harvest oriented games and most importantly, huge banquets in celebration of the harvest. That way we can use up a little of the excess food while it is fresh, and also we can give thanks. Now-a-days, we can eat fresh food at almost any time of year, so perhaps the concept of the harvest festival doesn't really apply to us anymore either. And I do want to make it a holiday more and more about the gratitude. But I also intend on letting it be about the food too. It's a part of my heritage. The food is a gift. I'm grateful for it. And I believe that eating it can be a celebration.

And I'm grateful for my in laws who indulged in me and my wishes for a traditional thanksgiving dinner, if not because they understood it, because they love me. And also cuz, you know, they love a good party.

Its already November??

Ok, I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while, so this is a very long post. And it's actually about Halloween. I didn't post a few weeks ago because I was waiting for pictures. Truthfully, I'm ashamed to admit that despite how hard we worked on our costumes, we didn't get any pictures of Charlie or I. We did get some of the kids, so you can see bits and pieces of us on the sidelines sometimes. Oh wait, I just remembered we did get one picture each, here they are. Aren't they nice?

We look pretty authentic, right? Silly for us to choose costumes that nobody understands but us. But the only way I can get Charlie to dress up is if I appeal to his inner nerd (I know, its kind of outer too). Our first year of marriage he dressed as a Borg, the second year he was a Jedi and the third year he was a star trek commander. Several of those costumes he still tries to convince me that he should be able to wear them to other things too like Church. I never let him though. What a mean wife.

Anyway, with this latest installment in a long line of nerdy costumes; nobody got it, which we knew would be the case. But Charlie got lots of funny suggestions about what he might be, things like Rambo and an Indian terrorist. And no matter what the suggestion was, Charlie always told the people they were right. They would go away like, "Yes! I knew he was a homeless arms dealer, I just knew it." People didn't ask me what I was, but I'm pretty sure everyone thought I was a Gypsy since that is what I would have thought if I didn't know.

We had a surprising amount of activities planned for the Halloween weekend, and we went to most of them. We had a dance, and a party at Lydia's school, and a party with some friends, all on Friday. I didn't think they did Halloween very much here, but apparently its gotten very big in the last few years. Though they don't have a lot of costume variety. There are basically like five different costumes to choose from at the stores. So people try to get creative. We entered Lydia in a costume contest at a school party (before you ask, she didn't win) Lydia was dressed as Cinderella and she was one of two princesses out of at least a hundred other little girls. That never happens in the states, you usually have 30 percent princesses and 30 percent fairies and the other 40 percent fairy princesses. I've never seen so many little girls dressed up as witches and zombies in my whole life. Lydia was like that girl from Labyrinth in the ballroom scene. But I guess a zombie is an easy do-it-yourself costume, since all you have to do apparently is dress in black raggedy clothes and paint your face white.

The next day, all the stakes in La Paz hosted a big Cultural Dance show, with each stake in charge of different dances. It was great, but we didn't stay for the whole thing, since it promised to be upwards of three hours. Then we went home and ate pizza and watched a "scary" movie with Charlie's family: Casper. I know, you are shaking in your boots. But those are the kind of Halloween movies I like.

On Sunday I had my primary sacrament meeting presentation. It went very well, I thought. The kids sang great. We had to skip a few of my favorite songs because our transitions were painfully long, but I felt pretty good about it when it was over. After church, we went over to the in-laws as usual, we carved our "pumpkins" which were actually yellow peppers, and ate pumpkin soup out of a green pumpkin that the girls had painted (they don't have orange pumpkins here). Even the two pickiest eaters Michelle and Jason actually liked the soup, plus everyone loved the carving activity, so I felt like the day was definitely a success. I stressed a lot over the weekend Because of getting costumes done and activities planned getting ready for my presentation, but all in all, everything worked out great and we had fun.

I'll catch up on other more recent stuff later, but now its Charlie's turn to post some pictures. Right baby?

So there.