I found a temporary solution that seems ok for now.  This article walks through the addition of an initramfs hook to add the necessary kernel modules and and executables to the initramfs image so that the boot process can deal with lvm thinpools and thinvolumes.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/673815/how-do-i-start-my-laptop-with-root-partition-on-lvm2-thin-pool

To recap, create file /etc/initramfs-tools/hooks/thin-provisioning-tools:

#!/bin/sh

PREREQ="lvm2"

prereqs()
{
       echo ""
}
...