Two Little Gutt Girls: Thanksgiving Feasting

This was our first Thanksgiving in which we didn’t have anywhere to be. Well, we had places to be, but those places didn’t include the homes of family members and several turkey based meals. On actual Thanksgiving, we would be landing in Houston after flying overnight from Hawaii. We’d then drive the four hours back to Austin and stop for “Thanksgiving dinner” at Buca di Beppo.

I was slightly mourning the loss of Thanksgiving, extended family, and food. At the spur of the moment, I decided that Tuesday the 19th would be our little Gutt family Thanksgiving. I went to Trader Joes and purchased all things Thanksgiving, just in small portions.We then had a huge meal. Well, Loran and I had a huge meal, the girls ate a lot of bread and cranberries. I tried to convince them that they liked sweet potatoes, because as babies, they actually did love sweet potatoes. As toddlers, I’d buy cans of sweet potatoes and they could nearly polish off an entire can each, but I wouldn’t let them because I was afraid of the diaper fallout. However, trying to convince them now was not successful. Ella took her obligatory bite and swore them off. Lily took her bite and immediately started gagging. She has to take a lot of “one bites” but this is the first one that actually made her gag. It was funny, but worrisome because I didn’t want to deal with Thanksgiving induced vomit, so we let her spit out the offending sweet potatoes. Apparently, she’s truly not a fan.

Wednesday the 20th was Ella’s last day of school before the trip, and luckily, it was also her school’s Thanksgiving Feast. In the morning, there was a concert, and lucky for us, it lined up with the day of the feast. Loran and I attended the concert (I sadly was late due to the obscene construction traffic after dropping Lily off), and they were so cute. After the concert we were geniusly (ironically, not a word) escorted into the book fair. We had to dodge all of the dollar signs flying through the air. We had given Ella a little bit of money and perfectly, she found a book in her price range that was fitting – “Froggy Goes to Hawaii” Perfect! A book for Ella and a couple for her teacher and she was all set. There was an hour between the concert/book fair and the feast. I just loitered around the hallways and eventually found a friend to shoot the breeze with.

Ella’s class eats “lunch” at 10:38. My body was not quite geared up for a full-fledged Thanksgiving meal for breakfast, but this would be Ella’s first trip through the hot lunch line so I wanted to make it special. They showed up and Ella was all smiles as I guided her into the line and showed her how to get hot lunch and pay with her lunch card.

True to form, Ella ate her cookie, cranberries, and chocolate milk in the half hour we enjoyed lunch together. I’m sure that was plenty of fuel for the next four hours of the day…I asked Ella how she’d know when it was time to go, and she told me that her teacher would show up. While the cafeteria was chaos with parents milling about and students allowed to sit wherever they wanted, sure enough, as if a built in clock went off in Ella, at 11:08, she popped out of her seat and said, Mrs. Ciccolella is here, I have to go. I did not notice the teacher’s arrival, but those little chicks began lining up, clearly used to the routine. It’s nice and comforting to see that even amidst chaos, my little chick knows the ins and outs of her school day. I thought she’d be sad to say goodbye, but I’d told her that when she’s in school, Mrs. Ciccolella is in charge, and she was all smiles as she waved bye to me and scurried down the hall behind her teacher.