For the non-French-speakers in the house:

Each year in Canada, there is a tradition to celebrate Thanksgiving the second Monday in October.

On Thanksgiving, we say thank you for the beautiful fruits and vegetables. It’s fall! Harvest season. After all their work, the farmers are very happy. They have had a good harvest.

We also thank God for all the beauty in nature, and all the people around us who love us. In our home, on Thanksgiving, we prepare a special dinner: a delicious turkey, potatoes, carrots and turnips. For dessert, we have a delicious pumpkin pie with whipped cream. Mmmm!

We wish you and your family a Happy Thanksgiving!

Earlier in my blog life, I use to link up regularly with Lizzi’s weekly Ten Things of Thankful Blog Hop. Thanksgiving always makes me reflect on the good in my life, so in a nod to both the season and that healthy habit, right now I’m thankful for:

Weekend swims with my daughters at the gym (one). I love watching them improve and just letting them have fun in the water. My 4-year-old can now swim about five metres and is trying to master touching the bottom with her hand in the shallow end. My eldest has decided cheerleading pyramids are cool and so is practicing standing and balancing on my shoulders.

The after-swim routine deserves a whole separate thankful (two). We take a quick sauna if there are no adults to disturb. My youngest this week assumed lotus pose, closed her eyes and meditated for about half a minute.

We’d just watched the old-school Ninja Turtle Movie (1990), so I’m pretty sure she was channeling Splinter (ie: a sensei rat) but perhaps the larger life lessons weren’t completely lost there.

We all then take our own showers in our own stalls. I keep my door open to keep an eye on them, but it encourages a nice level of independence and personal time. For all of us. GLORIOUS.

That brings me to Friday movie nights with the girls (three). Pretty much a weekly tradition by this stage, we all decide on the movie (ie: so I don’t have to watch Barbie if I REALLY can’t take it). This week, because of an interesting turn of events at my eldest’s seven-year-old birthday party last weekend, as mentioned, I rented the 1990s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I remember loving it as a child. Now? It was a bit more, well, slap stick and over the top cheesy than I remembered.

But my youngest loved it. My eldest thought there was too much fighting and kept asking to watch her pick for the evening. Which we did afterwards. I figured it was a good compromise. Her’s was Monster High: The Origin Story:

Generally speaking, body image stuff aside, I kind of love the “be yourself and celebrate the differences of others” messages in Monster High.

I’m forever thankful for my parents (four) who are hosting thanksgiving dinner this weekend so I don’t have to cook (five), who regularly babysit which makes my life work (six), and who took the girls overnight a few weekends ago so my husband and I could go out-of-town for a wedding without worrying about them (seven).

Many thankfuls to my husband (eight), who is currently determinedly keeping the girls away from me and the computer so I can get a few minutes to myself. And he’s going to take them for brunch soon without me. He also routinely comes home with wine and refills my coffee without asking on weekends.

I’m increasingly thankful for Kumon Math (nine). While my eldest’s main struggles are reading and writing, with the scrambles and tears last year to figure out how to deal with that, math got rather forgotten. So her marks also suffered there. In an effort to address that, I signed her up for Kumon Math in July. Basically, it involves two sessions a week at the centre and DAILY math homework. It sounded AWFUL. But has actually been amazing for her. Since July she’s has moved from Level 5 up to Level 3. The repetition and review of concepts have reinforced what she learned last year, and the forced writing of numbers seemingly ad infinitum is helping with fine motor control and writing.

AND? They gave her an award at the end of September.

It’s one of those “everyone is a winner” ones. But she so rarely gets congratulated for anything academic that I think it helped boost her (and my) confidence.

Lastly, given all the reading struggles, I’m thankful my daughter doesn’t hate books (ten). School reading club has her select two books from the library every two weeks for nightly reading. We aim for 10 minutes a night before bed.

Her selection this week? Paddington Bear. The irony of anglo mom reading a French translation of an English classic to her kids at bedtime isn’t lost on me, but there you have it.

So far, I generally do it with both girls so the youngest gets to follow along too. I do the reading, but ask a lot of questions to make sure my eldest is understanding and engaged. Every little bit, right?

So that’s my thankful in October 2016.

What are you thankful for this season? If you blog, hop along with Lizzi over at the Ten Things of Thankful Blog Hop.

Happy Thanksgiving!