Thanksgiving

Another year, another thanksgiving.

I still don't really 'get' thanksgiving. But the boys learned a lot about it at school. They brought home a montage of pictures they'd made, and I asked them to explain it to me. They said I should read it, and it would tell me everything I needed to know.

It said "Mayflower. Pilgrims. Native Americans. Turkey." Which was all I needed to know. Apparently. (There's a number of funny things about the way the boys identify races. They don't know, for example, what Indians are. There's native Americans. And they are blissfully unaware of race. There's a reasonable mixture of white, black, Hispanic and Chinese/Japanese [who are called Asian here, which is as logical as the UK census form giving the race categories Asian and Chinese, but anyway ...]. If you ask them to describe one of their friends, they never, ever use race. They don't seem to be aware of it. )

They had a thanksgiving feast at school. They had made tunics (from paper carrier bags - I wasn't sure of the significance of that), pilgrim hats, and Turkey hats. All the children in the two classes wore their tunics and pilgrim hats and climbed onto the steps of the climbing frame. Then a big piece of painted cardboard which had 'Mayflower' written on it, was placed in front of them, and parents dutifully took photos with their cellphones (I left mine at work, which is why they're not here yet).

That was on Wednesday. Yesterday we had our thanksgiving meal. We had Tofurky, actually we had two, which made S cross (she said we only needed one), sweet potato, veggies, and a pumpkin pie that was left over after the school feast so we stole saved it from going to waste. The Tofurky included giblet gravy (it had bits of mushroom floating in it, for extra realism) and cranberry dumplings, which were a bit weird until you get used to them.

Today is Black Friday, as the day after thanksgiving is known, although no one seems to know why, but it's the day that everyone goes shopping - the shops have sales, and people start their christmas shopping. JC Penney (think Debenhams) opened its doors at 4am. Because everyone goes shopping, me and the boys thought it would be a good day to go at Adventure City. Adventure city is a teeny weeny theme park, aimed at kiddies, in Anaheim.

Anaheim is a mysterious place. It's got Disneyland, the world's most famous theme park. It's got Knott's Berry Farm, which isn't a farm, doesn't have berries, but is a pretty big theme park, and it's got Adventure City. Of all the places you could build a theme park, why there?

My theory was that everyone else would be shopping, and so there would be no lines. I don't know if my theory was correct, but there were no lines. Quite a few rides, the kiddies just stayed on, including the airport bus, where they sat in the same seats without moving for seven turns.

The toilets were particularly child friendly. I wondered what was next. His'n'hers?

One the fire engine ride, there was an option to dress as a firefighter. They didn't seem to have the full range of sizes though.

There was a petting zoo, where you could buy sheep and goat feed for a dollar, but the animals were just as prepared to eat leaves from the ground, and were too lazy to pick them up themselves. (Daniel took this film. He's getting better.)