Thanksgiving

Another amazing Thanksgiving dinner in China! This is my fifth Thanksgiving in China and every year I've been able to celebrate with Brian and Victoria and their family. I do really miss being home with my family during holidays, but I'm thankful to have a great China family that I feel so at home with. And I'm thankful that Victoria is willing to put together such an amazing Thanksgiving feast. We try to pitch in and help, but really Victoria's the one who does all the work. Despite being in such a small town in China, we don't miss out on anything when it comes to the holidays.

Playing games before dinner

Our Thanksgiving center-piece, handmade by some vendor on the sidewalk. In reality, it's probably supposed to be some kind of phoenix/peacock, but we decided it worked well as a turkey.

Xiao Feng (the Rice's cat) was just a little too curious about the turkey.
We always have to pose with the perfectly cooked turkey every year.
Sadly, Brian was feeling a bit sick on Thanksgiving, so Dave did the carving (sad about Brian being sick, not about Dave carving the turkey!).
Jack, excited to try Thanksgiving dinner (um, we're not sure what the "L" pose is about . . .)
There were at least 25 people over at the Rices for dinner this year. It reminds me a lot of holidays at my Grandma's house. In Chinese, there's a great word to describe a situation like this: the word re nao 热闹 means something like bustling, festive, exciting, enjoyably crowded and noisy. But I don't think we have a good English equivalent. . I always like holiday celebrations that are very renao!
We even had football on the TV . . . a taped game between Ohio and Michigan from 2005 that we've watched the past three years! But, it still adds to the Thanksgiving ambiance.
So many great desserts! Victoria's cranberry apple pie could have won a prize at the state fair and Dave's chocolate turtle cheesecake could put Cheesecake Factory out of business!
We didn't know Rachel could eat so much! :)