Thanksgiving week

Thanksgiving is a Big thing to the Americans here. Seemingly, like our Chinese New Year, schools are on half day on the eve, followed by a 2 days holiday. We attended a thanksgiving lunch and dinner over the extremely long weekend. That was also when I realised, thanksgiving isn't about sale and shopping, but reunion, family, friendship and food! I meant I know that, but was quite oblivion about its true existence, till now.

Same time last year, I was busy shopping through the wee hours with crowds, joining queues after queues for deals. This year, it was a whole lot of new experience. We had a pot luck lunch at Lou's neighbourhood. He kindly extended the invite to our family. I brought curry chicken, as I find it the easiest to present, as a Singapore dish. When the food line was opened after a blessed prayer, I was wow-ed by the spread and I am very inspired to try more American recipes. We had our tummies covered from appetizers to dessert. Deliciously awesome beyond words! We left the place with an extremely heavy tummy! We couldn't even walk well.

In the evening, with still much food digesting in our body, we drove up to Pastor Lo's ranch for another round of feast. It was a day of overwhelming food blessing. We were not only awed by the food, but also by the animals he kept in his ranch. There were 24 chickens, 5 cats, 1 goat and 1 dog! Hope I didn't miss the counts. The kids had a great time of pet therapy. And the adults engaged in a wonderful time of conversations. I've learned so much from Pastor, he's such an inspiration, and a man who brings great blessings to people around him. I've never met a family with such great hearts and minds, their home is so filled with love and kindness. They are blessed with 5 children of their own and still, they are trying to adopt children from the World. It's mind blowing! 

 

Thanks Maria for the spread!

Jazz love the cats!

 

It was a great week! Truly! Nice meeting some locals and knowing more about their tradition. Extremely thankful for the people God placed in our lives. The ones who blessed and loved us, the ones who inspired us, the ones who moulded our characters from the amount of patience and tolerance we went through with them, the ones whom we learned a whole new set of experience and knowledge from. Thank you!

And shopping! Of course I did my good part in helping boost the local's economy. I did some slight shopping after dinner, at our nearest outlet stores. It was only my full force shopping on Black Friday, I unleashed my long stored power for a shopping marathon. It's a pity that my favourite stores were tagged with long queues, I had to sorely give it a miss. And friends who sent their good buys to my home, don't forget my kindness. Just kidding, it was easy.

In midst of these busy days - feasting, shopping and home shopping (online), I've to confess that I've been quite an indecent mum and wife. We had packed meals, late meals and the kids were left playing aimlessly everyday. They have been such good shopping companions when we shopped the whole day out, they napped, snacked and had some time on the tablet. For now, shopping's over, it will be a long long time before I madly spree again. Thankful for my loots!