Thanksgiving

OK, well, yeah - so I've been a REALLY bad blogger. Oh well. Life goes on. I just haven't felt motivated to sit down and deal with it. I'm sure part of it has to do with my Dad's death. But it's also actually A LOT of work to keep up this blog - I have to resize every photo I post here - because I take my photos in the highest quality settings on my cameras, so they are very large files, which means if I upload them like that, it takes FOREVER to load on blogger and often they just won't load at all - so I resize them and save the resized photos in a separate folder on my computer (Because I want to keep the large files for scrapbooking). Then there's the actual storytelling. And I'm kind of weird in case you hadn't noticed - like super anal about things. I don't like things to be out of order and it is going to SERIOUSLY bother me to do this Thanksgiving post when I haven't posted the photos and stories from our October trip to the mainland (but that is going to be a SUPER time consuming undertaking) and other goings-on from the last few months. So, I just put it off rather than give myself a stroke because my posts are out of order! ha!

But, I really like this blog. I don't want to give it up. This is more than just a way to keep our faraway family and friends up to date, it's a sort of in-depth journal on Dean's development and the everyday ups and downs of our lives. I think I'm pretty honest here - I don't think I hold things back and only share the good things or try to paint an overly idyllic picture of our family. Because let's be honest - raising a headstrong 4-yr-old isn't always easy!! But I don't want to forget a single moment of these days. And this blog will help ensure that I don't!

So, here I am - about to share the story of Dean's Thanksgiving Program at school because tonight is his Christmas Program and I just can NOT share the Christmas Program before sharing the Thanksgiving Program. And it's my goal to get completely caught up with sharing pictures and stories from the last few months before the end of the year, even if they are a bit out of order. So be prepared for several posts in the next few weeks!

So Children's Garden Preschool had their annual Thanksgiving Feast the day before Thanksgiving. All parents and families were invited to attend a large potluck feast for lunch and eat with the children after they performed a Thanksgiving Program. Dean's class, the Turtle Class, dressed as Pilgrims (I was so proud of Dean for keeping his Pilgrim hat on the ENTIRE time!! Dean does NOT like to wear ANYTHING on his head, so this was HUGE!!) and sang their Thanksgiving song (video at the end of this post). Here are some pictures...



I love this one with all the bare feet and a few rubber slippers thrown in...

Brother Alika gave a Hawaiian Blessing. Those are Green Ti leaves dipped in salt water from the Pacific Ocean just a few blocks away that he then sort of "flicked" on everyone as he chanted something in Hawaiian. It was interesting and cool at the same time.

Dean did a great job singing the Turtle Class' song. He sang the whole thing, nice and loud! Here are the words to the song (tune goes to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star):
Let's be thankful for this day
For our friends and for our play
Let's be thankful let's be glad
For the food and things we have
Let's give thanks for you and me
And our home and family.

The Roly Poly class and the Dolphin Class each performed a song and then the whole school sang a song in Japanese and then another song in Hawaiian. It was super cute!

And here's a video of Dean and his class singing their Thanksgiving Song. (If you get these posts in an e-mail update, you'll need to go to the actual blog to view the video. Just click on THIS LINK and then go to today's post, 12/17/10, and at the end of the post, click on the play button in the video):