Much to be Thankful For

As I've been saying practically on repeat for a couple months now, I wasn't sure what this Thanksgiving weekend would hold with that's been going on, and it definitely was different.  But what a crazy, wonderful long weekend full of good stuff it turned out to be!  

Many parts of Thanksgiving turned out to be just slightly odd, but I guess the core of it was still pretty solid.  Usually we go to Buffalo on the Wednesday before to gather with Craig's family at a local bar in memory of his Uncle Mike who died six years ago.  But this year the bars were closed in Buffalo so that couldn't happen.  Our church was only offering in-person church on Wednesday night, but Jacob had a basketball thing so that didn't work.  So, instead we stayed at home Wednesday night and I made pies, packed, and gathered up a couple gifts and cards we had to take with us.  We watched church online Thursday morning and then miraculously hopped in the car on time.  

We had a traditional meal with my parents for lunch, which was nice.  Even that was different, though, since they just got a larger kitchen table and new carpet in their dining room and opted to set us all up in the kitchen instead.  After digesting, we headed off to Craig's family.  Because just that group of immediate family was over the 10-person limit, we wore masks the whole time except when we sat down to dinner.  Was it a little odd?  Sure.  But was it worth it to feel less guilt and fear over gathering?  Absolutely.  As usual, the day involved far too much delicious food and lots of good family time.  We headed back to my parents' for the night, because I had baby time on tap the next day!

So remember a few weeks back when I hinted that we received some really good news but it wasn't ours to share?  Well...the Thursday after Election Day, I got a call from my oldest friend, Heather.  It was a little odd to get a call from her, so initially I was a little nervous that something bad happened.  But when she asked if I was sitting down, she completely shocked me by sharing that the day before they'd received a call...and they would be picking up a baby boy the NEXT DAY!  You have to understand--they've been trying to adopt for about 10 years now.  She had long known she was unable to have kids, but traditional adoption routes were a bit out of their budget so over the years they've tried to find an affordable way to adopt.  They went through a couple different agencies, one hopeful situation turned heartbreaking, and all these long years of waiting.  And now, out of nowhere, a baby!  I was so thrilled for them.  I was honestly also a little overwhelmed at the thought of a couple days' notice of taking on a baby, let alone at this stage in life, but when you've waited this long, I'm pretty sure none of that really matters!  Sure enough, Friday night that baby boy was in their arms!  It felt like a literal, modern day miracle.  Not sure any baby was ever more prayed for!  And now he was here!

Fast forward a few crazy weeks, and on the day after Thanksgiving, my mom and I went over to Heather's mom's apartment to meet baby Mason!

He is such a sweet little peanut--just six pounds and so tiny, still swimming in newborn clothes!  You always forget how little they are in these first few weeks!  But he was such a good, sweet baby.  It was such a joy to hold him!

And guess what?  I get to be his godmother!!  I'm so honored and so excited!  

Of course we were masked for the whole visit, as again, reducing that worry is probably what made the visit even possible, but we joked that Mason probably wondered who those funny people were without noses and mouths!  I did sneak the mask off for a couple pictures right at the end!

  

Right before we left he was chilled out so calm and aware that I had to snap one more picture!

I can't wait to see him again, but it's amazing to think how much bigger he'll be by then!  And fingers crossed, hopefully full of smiles!  It's been crazy that we've had a bit of a baby boom in our lives lately, from two of Craig's cousins to one of mine (and one more on the way), and now Heather's baby, and yet so much of this precious time has been lost to distancing.  I've been lucky enough to meet three of the four and spend a little time with them, but still, I feel like this whole span of time had such potential and it's been lost to the pandemic.  I still feel lucky for what little we've been able to do, but I will be sorry to miss out on so many family babies at Christmas!

After baby time, the four of us headed home.  Plenty of work awaited there!  I managed to take down all the fall decorations and move furniture in preparation for putting up our main tree the next day.  I also took the last bit of energy I had for the night to decorate our dining room tree.  I had set it up before Thanksgiving so it was ready when we got home, so it was just a matter of stringing lights and garland and hanging up this year's themed ornaments that I had set aside last year.  This had been my angel tree last year, but this year it is a Peanuts tree!  I think I counted 33 ornaments, all with a Peanuts theme!  It's extra fun to have this tree this year because it's technically in my "office" and it is the backdrop for Carter's school video chats!

Saturday was a BIG day, too!  It marked my parents' 50th wedding anniversary!  Obviously that is such a major accomplishment, and I think the fact that my dad's two siblings never made it there due to "death doing them part" made it all the more apparent how special this was.  Of course, my thoughts turned to the last 50th anniversary I recalled, which was my grandparents'.  I was almost 14 at the time, and we had a big party at their favorite restaurant.  They even got a limo ride there!  The funny thing was, obviously 50 years seemed like a super long time (back to the war!) and my grandparents seemed pretty old from my perspective at the time.  But when I did the math, I realized that my parents were right in the same general age range!  My grandpa was 72, which my dad will be in a month, and my grandma was 68.  My mom will be 70 in a few weeks (!) but I feel like she seems so much younger than my grandma did.  Not necessarily personality-wise, as both seem young at heart and pretty lively, all things considered, but my grandma was a TOTAL grandma.  Note the hair and the dress, for starters.  I'll give the glasses a pass as they were still somewhat in style.

This is a great picture of them, although the prior picture on the roll was taken while my grandpa was waiting for my grandma.  He was leaning on the door looking annoyed at his kids for spending the money on a limo, which was pretty awesome, too.

 

For reference, here's a picture of my parents from last Christmas, and they look pretty much the same now.  I just can't reconcile that they're the same ages!

 

Of course, COVID had to crash the party this year (literally and figuratively), so as much as my grandparents' party was something amazing to live up to, we had to find an alternate way to celebrate.  Maybe we'll figure out something else down the road, but for now, we decided a Zoom call would suffice, with a lot of special guests!  It took some doing, however, since we knew we wanted people we didn't have connections to.  I could get a bunch of people on Facebook, and I had a lot of family email addresses, but the rest took some work.  I scanned my mom's Facebook friend list and added a couple of her friends to my event invite.  My brother has remote access to their computer for tech support purposes, so he hopped on late one night (he's on the west coast) and grabbed their email list, which I scanned for anyone we'd want to include.  In the end I invited about 60 on Facebook plus more via email!  Of course, between picking a time, trying to keep the secret, and hoping their dinner plans didn't change due to fluctuating COVID zones, things got a little wacky.  I was a nervous mess most of the week, to the point I woke up at 5am one morning after a dream that I messed up the call, and couldn't get back to sleep!  So that was obviously in my thoughts on Saturday, all day.  I started the day with a couple fun social media posts (including pictures I scanned from the mini wedding album I inherited from my grandma), and then for a couple hours my focus was able to be turned to something a bit more fun--our new Christmas tree!

 

Before I get any further, I just realized that I never told the story of the previous Saturday.  We went out as a family to look for a Christmas tree (among other things) and ended up having a really great outing.  We went to both Lowe's and Home Depot to scope out trees, dishwashers, countertops, and other kitchen upgrades.  Any other day it could have been a disaster, but the stars aligned and it actually went shockingly well.  Upon discussion with our therapist as we claimed it as a success for the week, I think it was partly because we weren't rushed, partly because we had a fun goal, and partly because we were able to just let the kids have input and roll with it.  While we didn't have much luck with the dishwasher (that's just going to have to happen online with reviews and stock availability handy), we did have fun discussing the kitchen stuff, and I think I even picked out a paint color finally!  As for the tree, last year after it was clear our pre-lit tree was failing after 12 years (at least two strings out and almost all of the replacement bulbs used), the boys and I picked a new one out.  But for various reasons the timing never worked out to get it.  The goal for this year was to either find that one again, or find one even better!  Sure enough, essentially the same tree was back at Home Depot and it definitely beat out anything we saw at Lowe's.  The only problem?  It was shockingly expensive.  When I checked my photo of the tag from last year (so I could remember which one we liked), I realized it had been on sale when we saw it.  I wondered if maybe it would go on sale with similar timing this year, so I spent days stalking the Home Depot site.  While I knew their Black Friday sale was still going for another week, I had scoped out their ads and it seemed like their local ad would be changing early in the week.  Well, Wednesday night as I was laying in bed, I just checked the site on a whim, and much to my surprise, not only was it on sale, but it was even cheaper than last year--$75 off!  I ordered it on the spot for curbside pickup!  Since Friday had been such a busy day, we earmarked Saturday afternoon to pick it up.  After lunch we grabbed it, and setup was quick and easy.  Not even any cords--the lights go on when you connect the sections of the tree!  It was nice to have it there and lit (even without decorations) for the rest of our day.  After all, we had some celebrating to do! 

 

The call with my parents started out with just us kids, plus my niece and nephew joining in from their mom's.  People were slowly building up in the "waiting room", waiting to be released in groups.  The hope was to do siblings first, then the siblings' kids, then extended family, and finally friends.  However, between people whose Zoom name was general (like, "iPad") or who had the same name as someone else we were expecting from a different group, things got a little crazy as I was sort of forced to let people in without knowing.  So eventually I brought in as many as I could, and from there people just came in waves!  We had at least 30-some participants for a time, with more that showed up after some others hopped off.  I bet we had close to 50 households total!  Keep in mind that there were often multiple people at each spot, so there were a LOT of active talkers at any moment.  It was super chaotic, but it was fun seeing my parents notice new people and having people share stories.  One of the highlights was having our old neighbors from my parents' first house pop in, first this lovely older couple who my parents still reminisce so fondly about, plus their daughter who used to babysit for John and me, and then one of our neighbors on the other side.  That neighborhood was the best, and it was fun to see both neighbors right next to each other in the call!  It really did turn out pretty awesome, and I think my parents were a little overwhelmed, but in the BEST way.  In the end, we found out my dad happened to be doing a late bathroom trip that one night and saw my brother poking around in their email (due to the light emanating from the office), so while it wasn't a huge surprise, I think seeing such a large group was still more than they ever imagined!  My dad said it might have been even better than a party! 

That night they went out to dinner with my dad's brother and his wife, plus a couple who is very good friends with both couples.  Even that got a little crazy because it was an expensive place (same place at the casino that Craig and I used to go for his work Christmas party--my uncle insisted and was going to pay), but then my brother beat my uncle to the punch, which ended up being a whole other thing!  But as a whole, they had an amazing day, and that's really all that matters.  It's definitely not how I thought we'd celebrate, but it all worked out. 

I finished off most of my house decorations Saturday night, and then Sunday ended up being a pretty quiet day.  I did a little shopping and yard work, and eventually did all the tree ornaments.  The tree is super fun, by the way.  It's half a foot taller and it really fits the space perfectly.  My only complaint is that the top branch for the topper is a bit too floppy--our usual topper works but I wanted to try out the one that's on our other tree and that one was much too heavy.  So if I want to do that down the road I need to rig something up.  But the best part of this tree is the crazy light show!  This tree has something like 100 functions, but mostly there are seven colors and a handful of multicolor options (regular multicolor, red-green, red-white, green-white, blue-white, red-green-white, red-white-blue) and you can have them steady, flashing, gradually changing, whatever.  It's basically the new toy around here and is sort of like a big mood ring, I guess!  Pick your mood today!  At any given moment Jacob will have changed the color, so I never know what tree I'll see when I get up from my desk!

White lights--the only drawback is that they no longer match the incandescent lights on the wreath and railing...but oh well.

Multicolor - I like these colors so much better than some LEDs that only do red, yellow, green, and blue.  Jacob thinks it needs more yellow/orange--it has a pale yellow color but compared to a traditional incandescent multicolor string that has red, pink, yellow, and orange, this is much more of a "cool" color palette.

I love the red, green, and white options.  Red and green by themselves are a bit overpowering (even on a lower brightness) but when mixed they are perfectly Christmasy!

And to give you the full effect, check this out...this is just a single setting among the many different ones!

So, now here we are.  It's December 1st and the countdown has officially begun...literally.  As if four Advent Calendars weren't enough, I did this little Pinterest-inspired one last night while Carter was working on his art project.  I figured since we're home so much, maybe a little old-school-inspired one might be fun to add to the mix.  I feel like I did one like this as a kid.  Maybe if I really get going I'll do a paper chain, too, just for old time's sake!  I feel like we used to do one every year in school, but I suppose in a diverse, multicultural school, that can't really be a thing.  Maybe they should count down to Christmas break instead, as it was a good art project with all the cutting, linking, and waiting for glue to dry before moving on to the next one.  And I loved watching my chain get shorter!

Admittedly, though, I'm just not feeling Christmas at all right now.  Even with the decorations, two trees, the Christmas music in my car, and all of the Christmas media everywhere, I'm just not there.  I think part of it is the lack of snow so far.  We haven't had any that stuck more than a couple hours, so that's not helping.  After all, we just had 80 degrees happening a few weeks ago.  But I think the other part is knowing that so much will be missing this year--Christmas parties and events and extended family celebrations chief among them.  I actually briefly lost it a bit in the car after my trip to Wegmans last night when I realized even the Christmas music wasn't doing it, and that normally flips a switch when all else fails.  I truly think part of my brain is still stuck on pause back in March, waiting for the summer and fall we never really had.  Christmas was among the last "fun" things we did normally, and now all of a sudden we're back here again, but it's just not feeling the same.  And because so much of my Christmas tradition is steeped in family time, I'm just not sure there's anything that will be able to fill that hole.  I know it's still early and I hope it gets better soon, but right now it's harder than I expected.

Even still, it was a weekend full of things to be thankful for, from the dinners that could have not happened but did, to a sweet baby and major milestone.  We are blessed, even in the midst of this wacky year that's thrown everything for a loop.  I know it's true but it's taking a little while for my heart and my head to catch up with each other.  This pandemic has changed a lot and the holidays will be no exception.  I know I have to find the good stuff and hope that this is one of those times where the odd, different stuff turns into the memorable stuff, but right now it feels a little overwhelming.  Maybe I just need sleep...or a tiny Christmas miracle.  Or both.  Only one of those is in my control, so let's start there, shall we?  Good night...