Welcome to the Feast

To say our family is blended is at once an understatement and an insult. Of course we blend, we are a family. Our family gatherings often include ex's, kids, ex's kids, ex's new spouses, adoptees, orphans, biological relatives and often strays of one sort or another. We are just like that. Every addition expands our nuclear family in exponential ways. So we talk about family a lot, what is means to us, who is in our family etc. I imagine it is all a bit intimidating from the outside. Doodle doesn't really use the term family much. For him all of the people who love him are his family. Crusty is a bit more discerning, but not much. His family tree is really more of a family Rubik's cube. I think he likes it that way.

Last year sometime a Thanksgiving toy arrived at our house. It is blindingly traditional, a table with the usual autumn foods, corn, apples, turkey (removable!) two benches, two Native Americans( I don't imagine these figures can actually be attached to any tribe, they are pretty generic Native Americans) and two wholesome looking paleface pilgrims. Oh, and the horse and cart. Can't forget the livestock. Doodle mostly plays with it as it came sometimes adding a train engine to the mix for fun. Since we have been talking about all the kinds of people that populate our family group he has been adding to the table. A few days ago I found it like this.By my count, there are two pilgrims, two Native Americans, one bird, one horse, one garbage collector, one zookeeper, one witch, one lion a pirate and a superhero. I think he gets it.