When a Two Year Old Cooks Thanksgiving Dinner…

As we were hosting Thanksgiving dinner at our house, I put Ali to work using her new cooking skills.

Cooking with a toddler creates many opportunities for great conversations.

Ali: “What are you doing?”

Me: “Peeling the onion so I can chop it.”

Ali: “You’re peeling off the chocolate?!?!?!?”

(a minute later…)

Me: “Ohhh…the onions are making me cry!!”

Ali: “Don’t cry! There’s no need to be scared!!”

It didn’t take long for her new chef self to become a very opinionated chef self. For instance, she apparently thought that we needed to add more Ginger to our spice cake:She HAD been telling me she wanted to make Gingerbread cookies…I guess I should have listened.

After we finished our first round of cooking, we went outside to check on Chris’ progress with the Christmas lights.

I’m pretty sure that this is the longest that he’s ever held off on decorating the house for Christmas, and it’s all Alabama Football’s fault.

He loves Christmas. It cheers him up tremendously. And so, he uses decorating the house as therapy after a really bad football game.

In years past, Alabama would lose a game sometime in early November, dashing all of Chris’ hopes and dreams for a championship season. So he would drive straight home from the game, barely speaking a word, then walk outside and feverishly festivate our house.

And then he’d come in, a happy husband once again.

But since Alabama is having a good season (until right this second while I’m writing this blog and they’re losing to Auburn and he’s feverishly decorating the INSIDE of the house while pacing and sighing), he actually waited until almost an appropriate time to decorate.

Anyway, back to the story. We went out to check on Daddy’s progress, and Ali was thrilled.

So as he strung lights,

We swung and watched:

And gave supervisory opinions on where the lights should go.

With all of that inactivity, we got cold.

(Now you can’t ever say I didn’t post a picture of myself without makeup.)

Chris told me that he was planning a National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation-esque house-lighting, where he would wait until after Thanksgiving dinner, and then make the whole family go out on the lawn, freezing to death, while he dramatically plugged the lights in and the Angels On High sang “AAAAAAAHHHH”

I told him reenacting that scene would just be BEGGING for our neighbor’s septic tank to start leaking and running down the road à la Cousin Eddie’s RV, but he didn’t care.. .

But when it came down to it, he couldn’t wait that long. Luckily for the family, the house was pre-lit upon their arrival:

Finally, we served dinner:

And then it was Tessa’s turn to watch and supervise:
When dessert came out, everyone kept commenting on how gingery the cake tasted…and how much they liked it. I guess Ali is trading in her Project Runway career aspirations to be on Top Chef instead.