Thanksgiving and Stuff

Before I get into Thanksgiving, I feel like I need to do a little photo catch-up.  It's been a while since I posted any pictures, per a previous post that mentioned how entirely unexciting my November had been on the photo front.

Here's a picture of Carter handing off our Operation Christmas Child shoebox that we did a couple weeks ago.  We'd never gotten around to filling one, and almost flaked this time because we couldn't get the things we wanted for an older kid in brick-and-mortar stores at the last minute...but we switched to a toddler and that went much smoother.  It cost about $20, but we crammed a lot in: a squishy soccer ball, a stuffed dog, a dump truck that made noises, a little kaleidoscope, a t-shirt, a straw cup, a washcloth, a toothbrush, toddler sized crayons, and a notepad.  We had a fun night of shopping to get it done, and in the end our church did more than 700 boxes!

Carter knows me well and has started calling me downstairs during his breakfast to tell me there's a pretty sunrise.  I love that so much.  On this particular day, there was an ice pillar above the sun and Carter thought it looked like a cross.  It was a little hard to capture, but it was still really pretty.

Carter is seriously rocking middle school so far with his 99+ average, earning him the highest honor roll level.  He also won an award from one of his teachers.  Jacob's quarter wasn't quite as stellar due to one not-great grade (not entirely his fault--bad timing with an illness, an absent teacher, and the end of the marking period), but he did okay.  He's missed a lot of time due to illness and appointments, and his morning tardies are still an issue, but he was still over a 90 average.  

Another morning sunrise alert from Carter--claw marks in the sky!

Our Thanksgiving was fine, but in many ways it felt like a repeat of some of last year's frustrations.  We decided to stay in town until Thanksgiving morning, mostly to get a good night's sleep in our own beds, and I found myself with an empty evening as a result.  I decided I had to put it to good use, so I got our little tree decorated.  I had put up both trees the previous weekend to get the furniture moving over with and save myself a little time with the late holiday, but usually I don't decorate until after Thanksgiving.  But I knew I could get it done, and why not?  We wouldn't be here for long anyway.  I always set aside the theme tree ornaments the year before when I put everything away, so it's easy to pull the bin out, throw two strings of lights and some garland on, and then just hang the ornaments, no thought involved.  And since there are less, there isn't as much strategy to get them hung, unless you count filling gaps in my sweet little Charlie Brown tree.  Appropriately, this year's theme was back to Peanuts, which is always so fun.  Bonus that we had one new ornament from last year which was super cute to rediscover and bring out for the first time.  It's baseball themed and plays "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" with Snoopy giggling in the background.  

We got up Thanksgiving morning and got moving for a preferred 8:30 departure time.  Unfortunately, Jacob (as usual) was dragging his feet and later said we never told him what time we were leaving (we did but he probably ignored it, and he never asked, either).  We didn't get on the road until much later than that, and I was really annoyed.  Luckily I was able to make up some time on the road, even though we actually ran into some snow--but thankfully nothing of note considering a day later many areas south of Buffalo were buried.  We took my car since we figured since we weren't staying over with luggage and I figured my parents wanted to see it.  The van also definitely doesn't need any more miles on it than necessary.  Thanks to my catch-up, we got there just as church was starting.  Not ideal, but could have been worse.  Church was nice as usual, and it's always good to see a bunch of the old St. Matthew contingent.

It was good to spend some time at my parents' as we just haven't been there a lot recently.  it isn't the easiest to all sleep there anymore when we go together, and I think with busy sports weekends and just needing to maximize my home time on weekends (both for practical and relaxation purposes), we haven't done as many trips there as we used to.  I know I should make it there more often, so that's something I need to work on, either after Craig's season or as Jacob's basketball allows.  Anyway, our Thanksgiving meal was low key but good.  I ate in moderation but definitely kept picking at the stuffing!  

While we were there my mom had a bunch of stuff for me to go through and bring home--stuff she had cleaned out of my room, wrapping paper she got for free, two bottles of Walmart's Chicken Finger sauce (a Raising Cane's dupe--we approve!), extra wine coolers they had, and some other random things.  She also had two boxes of ornaments she was ready to part with that were ready for me to look through.  I, of course, need more ornaments like I need a hole in the head, but I tried very hard to limit myself to ones I had connections to or just really liked.  I ended up with four--a beaded "modern" wire angel, a sculpted glass angel, a gold metal church that could have a light poked through (although mine are mostly too wide), and a pretty gold window/Christmas tree scene with a prismatic/holographic starburst background.  I thought about a few but ultimately didn't have enough of a connection to keep any more.  I know there are dozens more I will someday struggle to part with, so I'm trying to be good now.  Hopefully I don't end up with all of my mom's until my kids start taking their ornaments to their own homes.

Soon enough it was time to go.  Between the 45-minute drive and any lead time for the food I'm making, we usually have to get going earlier than I'd like.  But at least we were driving in daylight.  We got to Craig's parents' house just as the sun was going down...except his parents weren't actually there.  Because of all the things that have been happening there over the past year, his parents opted to travel near Boston to Craig's aunt's house.  That was very much a bummer for us because we'd obviously like to see them and spend the holiday with them, particularly since Craig's dad's health has been funky and you just never know.  So it definitely wasn't the same without them, but I guess on the bright side we didn't have to deal with any actively obnoxious battling like last year.  However, we knew it would be another very loud, busy, chaotic holiday, much like last year, but this was even more intense than we thought.  In addition to the six people in Craig's brother's family, there were two significant others, our niece's dog, our sister-in-law's parents (I was happy to see them--I love chatting with her mom), her sister and nephew (he goes to school in Buffalo--and if not for illness, the dad and disabled sister would have been there too), the couple whose wife is from the Dominican (she was very excited to hear about our trip after we mentioned it last year), a single mom and her daughter who have been there many years before, an older lady and her gentleman friend, another couple, and a family of four.  There were something like four tables of 6-8 seats from the kitchen to the living room.  It was....a lot.  The food, of course, was delicious and I ate until I was stuffed...and then added pie on top of it.  But, as with last year, I found myself a little overstimulated and missing our quiet family Thanksgivings when we all fit at one table, sharing what we were thankful for, and settling in for the night afterward to start some early Black Friday shopping.  It's nice to talk to a variety of people and reconnect, but it's just not what our tradition once was and I miss that one.  Interestingly, I got an inkling that we're not alone in thinking the house "takeover" isn't really right or fair, by one person I never thought might think that.  Hmmm.  We gave our pie a few minutes to digest, I gathered my dirty dish, and we headed out.  We got home around 10pm and pretty much went right to bed.

Friday was not quite as productive as I was hoping.  My entire weekend was an odd mix of bursts of energy and a complete lack of productivity.  Friday was just frustrating for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was another Jacob health freakout.  He's just not feeling great overall and was once again insisting he had pneumonia--once again with no fever or obvious clear symptoms.  Eventually we might have to once again do the ER Hail Mary to try to get to the bottom of why he just can't seem to get to 100%, but for now we're looking ahead to his GI follow-up in January.  I still don't like the ongoing reflux and that so many of these issues seem to recur.  I once again got very upset when Jacob was acting like we've done nothing to help him (seriously?  I feel like it's been a full-time job and I know my anxiety seems to have spiked every few days or so since June), and finding the balance between him being open with us and constantly harping on things (causing my anxiety to ramp up) is really challenging.  He doesn't want to be a burden but there's no denying this is hard.  I just don't know how to continue to approach this with doctors or what other doctor we should be trying to talk to.  I'm at a loss at this point.  That while discussion completely stole my motivation for most of the day, so I eventually compromised by bringing out the ornaments and doing the big tree, since that took the least amount of thought and felt like something I could complete in an evening.

While I was putting away the fall stuff I took this picture.  These were the last two buds from my summer flowers that survived all the frosts under the patio table.  I had moved them to the porch recently but most of what was there was dead-ish, so I cut the buds off and popped them in water to finish the season.  They're so pretty.  And that greenery has been around since my Mother's Day bouquet.  I have no idea how, but it's as pretty as the day I got it...and I don't think it's fake, although it has crossed my mind.

I tried to be as productive as possible on Saturday morning (to the point I almost forgot to pick Jacob up from practice).  I had brought up the remaining bins the night before and tried to place a few of the easy things.  I mostly moved things to the dining room table to wait for some decisions the next day.  In the end the process ended up relatively painless but it still took a good chunk of my weekend.  I had to take a break in the afternoon, though, because Carter and I were planning to go see "Elf The Musical" at his school.  I went to a middle school performance with Jacob ten years ago and was super impressed, so I was excited to see this one, especially since it would involve kids Carter knows.  I was a little nervous about tickets so we stopped in as the box office opened and got our seats, then went to grab what was supposed to be a quick lunch at the Burger King around the corner.  We had an extra long wait, but still managed to make it back in time.  

The show ended up being really cute and well done.  I give those kids so much credit.  It was a long show and they did amazing with all the singing and dancing and acting.  I didn't even realize there was a real orchestra until the intermission--they were that good.  The lead was very different than the movie feel (because it's a kid, obviously, which feels different than an adult acting like a kid), but he did really well with the goofy vibe.  It turned out that the little brother was a kid that used to go to daycare with Carter.  I couldn't figure out why he looked familiar until I looked him up in the program.  The girl who played Jovie was a really good singer.  My college friends' daughter was in one of the ensembles, and Carter knew a bunch of the other kids.  An added bonus was that the principal played the head of the publishing company, which was amusing, especially when the brother called him an idiot!  They threw in a few school-specific jokes and it was just a really sweet show.     

Back at home we thought about going to the Knighthawks' opener, but Jacob didn't want to go and it would have been a long time away from him, not to mention that I wanted to finish the decorating.  I ended up finishing everything except for the stairway garland (my stupid lights didn't work--twice!) and my window clings, which always take me a while (and in fact last year I let it go so long that I never ended up doing them).  I made sure those things got wrapped up Sunday.  I actually still need to remember to bring our batch of giant seasonal stuffed animals out of the crawl space--the chubby moose, snuggly penguin, moose in fleece winter gear, and musical Snoopy usually just hang out in the basement anyway.  It felt good to get everything done, but then I spent the late afternoon Sunday making a batch of Chex Mix (Jacob's request), a batch of blueberry muffins (from a mix, I'm not crazy), and a pan of Cocoa Pebbles treats (because Carter said the two boxes we had were stale and I had marshmallows to finish off, too).  Probably the biggest victories of the weekend were getting Jacob's shoe/bag and food storage messes back under control.  I needed his food cleaned out and moved so I could put out my nativities.  It always kills me because he throws out so much wasted food (usually either stale or expired or something he didn't like), but it's better than it all taking up valuable space.  My parents might be coming next weekend for the Knighthawks game or Jacob's game or both, so the more we can get the house in order now, the better!  I will also enjoy the decorations way more if the rest of the house isn't as chaotic.

So, as we go into the holiday season and a new week, we have our roof getting done tomorrow (!) and the basketball season officially starting Wednesday.  That will be enough for one week, though I really need to get a handle on lists and buying gifts ASAP.  Oh, and a Christmas card design would be good, too.  Here goes nothing...