Even though Halloween just ended, when you have children you kick it into high gear, straight into the other holidays! There is no layover period between the three: Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. As much as the major retailers want us to believe Christmas is the next holiday, Thanksgiving actually comes first (sorry)! I have two toddlers, who I assume, do not remember about Thanksgiving from last year, so I decided to start reintroducing the holiday.
This week we picked up an awesome gingerbread “Build Your Own” Turkey from Trader Joes. Unlike the haunted house they have for Halloween, the turkey has one extra step of prep to make the icing. It is not a difficult step, but I didn’t read the instructions first (whoops), and had two impatient toddlers waiting and drooling over the candy, while I prepped the icing. You live and you learn, and I am sharing my experience so you don’t end up in the same little predicament.
Before we began decorating we separated the chocolate candy into same color piles, and lined up the gummy candies, to count.
The boys were also able to identify the parts of the turkey: feathers, head, feet, and tummy. 
Overall we had a great time decorating and working together to build the turkey! I did let the boys eat some chocolate candy, but avoided the frosting, which had egg whites.
After we cleaned up the million little sprinkles that attacked my kitchen table like the plague, I pulled out two Thanksgiving themed books. At the end of one of the books, we opened a discussion about what being thankful means and what the boys are thankful for. My three year old said he was thankful for “the cat and doggies”, while my two year old concluded “yes, cat…meow”. Job well done, and clearly they have the perfect understanding of what it means to be thankful!
