Thanksgiving 2012

Thanksgiving this year was special, since it was also Laney's birthday. I wanted the day to be special for her but also be a meaningful Thanksgiving.

We started by cooking on Wednesday. She loves to cook and wanted to cook her own birthday cake. 

Can I say that I adore having big kids?

And this is what our kitchen looks like when we cook. We are messy, messy cooks!

Thanksgiving morning dawned beautifully, and I went for a run. Partially to wake up enough so I could start cooking and partially because I'm sort of beginning to (gasp) enjoy running. 

Or what I probably still need to call "running." 

But gosh the trees. I am already beginning to mourn the passing of autumn. My favorite. 

I came home from the run to find the two musical members of our family having a voice/guitar lesson/practice session.

Daddy was home for four solid days, except for one quick gig one night. The kids were beside themselves with excitement. 

I had gotten a brilliant idea for my cupcake holder, and I sent the boys out in their pajamas to collect pine cones. 

We've been studying birds in school, and we used some of the pine cones to make bird feeders to place around the yard in hopes of attracting some birds we could study.

Here's hoping we attract birds and not squirrels. 

Now I just love the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. When I was in labor, on Thanksgiving Day, we had the parade on. My regular doctor was snow skiing in Colorado for the Thanksgiving holiday, but thankfully I really loved the doctor that was on call. At one point he paused in front of the television with his arms crossed on his chest, and after watching for a few minutes he said, "Does anyone really watch this stuff?"

Allen cleared his throat nervously and nodded in my direction. Thankfully I was mid-contraction and unable to speak at that moment. The doc's eyes got wide and he scooted out the door before I recovered enough to respond.

Soon after, in a fit of labor-induced emotion, I nearly sobbed, "I love the parade. Can we name the baby 'Macy'?"

Allen laughed and said, "Well, yes, if you want to..." 

I sniffed and cried, "Okay. I think I want to."

When she arrived, I decided to go with our original plan of naming her Elane Sue (after my grandmother) and calling her "Laney."

I have to tell her this story every year though.

Our family tradition is to have a big breakfast and watch part of the parade. 

After quickly eating, I head back to the kitchen to watch it in there while I cook. I annoy everyone by yelling periodically, "Look! It's Sesame Street! You guys used to love this part! Look! It's Dora! Remember when you loved Dora, Laney? Look! It's a marching band! My favorite!..."

This goes on until it's over. 

My sweet, patient family.

This year, since it was Laney's birthday, the boys wanted to interrupt our usual traditions to give Laney their presents. They had chosen, and wrapped them, themselves. And they just could't wait. to give them to her. 

Zane knew she wanted a doorbell for her room. 

She loved it. 

Jude chose her art supplies. 

He really knows her love language. Her face says it all. 

Then I got back down to business. 

We alternate Thanksgiving between my in-laws and my family. This year was my family's turn, and since my mom had to work until the late afternoon, we decided to have Thanksgiving dinner this year. I was really excited about this. 

It worked out really well, and I like it better than having Thanksgiving lunch. I had more time to get everything ready, we had time to relax some and I actually had time to do some fun table decorating, which is my favorite. Well, after the cooking and the eating anyway...

We had to take some birthday portraits. (We thought we were funny too.)

Then the family arrived!

The sisters. The wine is called "Middle Sister" and it had a cute picture of "us" on it. 

We were amused by it...

Insert us eating a really good dinner here. It was fabulous. Everyone contributed to the dinner, and it was all just wonderful.

Then it was birthday cake time!

Okay, my mom is in here too, but evidently I can't sing and take pictures very well and you can't see her, unfortunately.

Since it was Laney's birthday, we thought it would be fun to go see a movie after dinner. She chose "Brave" which just happened to be at the dollar theater. 

My sweet mama's girl. That made me very happy!!! 

We ended the day exhausted but happy. 

The next day, Friday, was my recovery day. We ate leftovers and watched movies and snuggled and were just big lazy bums. 

Oh, and my sister came over and the hubs and I had a date to the thrift store. That was pretty much awesome. 

Saturday was college football day. After a day of rest I was in cooking mode again, and I cooked up a storm. We ate and watched football and hung out all day. 

It was wonderful.

And it was finally cold enough for another of my favorite things:

The boys liked being near the fire, but it "burned their eyes." Thankfully they had their safety goggles to put on. 

This helped tremendously, they said.

Thank goodness for that. 

One last leftovers dinner. 

I adore leftovers. 

Now there's nothing left and the kitchen is all clean. 

I'm sort of sad about that. 

Sunday was a sweet day of fellowship with our faith family which I am so profoundly thankful for. I then had a two hour nap. The day ended with another fire and time for me to document all of this loveliness here. 

None of us are ready to get back to the real world. I love Thanksgiving so much. It's one of my favorite holidays. I keep the table decorated through this last week of November and keep celebrating this month I love so much. I'm not ready for December yet. Thankfully we have another week of celebrating November!

It was a wonderful Thanksgiving. The Lord is always faithful. 

Caverns Field Trip

I have always wanted to go to some caverns that aren't too far from our house. Luckily one of our  homeschool groups scheduled a field trip there. I was probably a little more excited than the kids were...

It looked like we were driving into the end of the world...

This just made me happy.

This is clear (and gray) quartz. We were deep embedded of our study of Revelation at the time of this field trip, and these just reminded me of Revelation 21.

I was slightly ready to stop seeing Revelation everywhere.

This is your standard postcard shot. 

I considered getting one of these for the backyard.

The kids "panned" for gems. It was fun and all the kids enjoyed it. This also reminds me that we were supposed to study out the different gems we got that day.

Um, yeah. Homeschool field trip fail. 

The girl kid found some clear glasses in the gift shop and asked me to get them for her. I hesitated, but they were only three dollars and since she was trying to be just like her mother, how could I resist?

That is going to come to a screeching halt soon enough, so why not encourage it for the short time it lasts?

This was the perfect time of year for this field trip. The scenery was breathtaking. 

Waiting to go in the caverns. This shot was accidental, but it makes me terrifically happy. 

So. Walking down into these caverns was simply an assault on all of my senses. At once. It was amazing. I needed a few minutes to take it all in. It was just surreal. We sat through an informational lecture that was really interesting. They told the history of this particular cavern and a lot of information about the rock formations and things like that. I really liked all of that.

Then. They did this thing called "Total Darkness." I have not in my adult life been scared of much, but when they turned off all of those lights, I was slightly panicked. Part of it was because I also have never experienced dark that all encompassing. You could almost feel it. They kids did fine. I was about twenty seconds away from turning on my cell phone and ruining it for everyone. 

I am fine with never doing that again.

I'm afraid of the dark. That dark. Who knew?

And back to Revelation for a second. (I know. I was ready to be done thinking about Revelation too.) When reading and studying the bowls and seals and wrath and destruction, the overthinking planning part of my brain thought (seriously) "Where would I go? Where could the family go?" And I thought of caverns like these. "We'd be safe there! From the fire falling from the sky! From the stinging locust! From the drunk lady on the..." Never mind. Really. 

Trust me. I hear the absurdity of that. But it's true. And after the "Total Darkness" debacle, I literally thought, "Well, that won't work." I mean, we wouldn't have cell phones for long, and the flash light batteries wouldn't last long and then what would we do? And this cavern didn't have the water supply that we would need, although all the water is going to dry up anyway...

As ridiculous as it sounds, I'm glad I got to see this fleshed out. I saw how silly it was to try to plan my way out of Revelation.

I'm only typing this all out to (hopefully) remind myself later how ludicrous it is to try to over plan... anything.

So we'll just call this a lesson learned.    

Ahem.

Anyway...

We saw a "light show," which was Christmas themed. 

We toured the caverns, which was really cool. 

After that the kids did a huge maze. I refused to go in. I told one of my friend's husbands that I already knew I wasn't a fan of mazes. I am not a fan of being lost. I sort of do that in real life, literally and metaphorically, enough. I'm sure it's not a control thing at all...

Ahem.

How about a day where you get to face all of your ridiculous fears?

He joked after I confessed my Total Darkness trauma that we could have a high tower that overlooked a pit of snakes and we could just have a cornucopia of realized fears. 

That made me laugh. Except I'm not afraid of heights and I'm definitely not afraid of snakes. But dang that darkness nearly did me in. 

Anyway, this nice daddy took about 2,962 kids into the maze by himself while the mamas sat outside and had some good conversation. (Insert me being deeply thankful and blessed by the mamas God has so graciously placed in my life.)

Since we had a crazy busy day this day, we headed out shortly after. This was a great trip, and I'm thinking a cavern tour might be in my future. As long as I can figure out this darkness thing. And while I'm not studying Revelation. We can all be thankful that I'm not studying Revelation again for a little while. 

Goodness. 

Laney is 11

It was 11 years ago tonight. 

A rough couple of weeks were coming to a close. 

I had gone to my normal doctor's appointment not expecting anything out of the ordinary. I had seen a new doctor, and after examining me, she exclaimed  "You're four and a half centimeters! You need to go home and get your bags packed because I'm probably going to see you back here at the hospital tonight to deliver this baby..."

I called my husband before I had even left the parking lot and asked him to get off work early and come home as soon as possible. I called my mom and asked her to come to the house when she got off work too.

I went home to a quiet house and finished packing my hospital bag. I was crying, a ball of nervous excitement. I knew it was my last night as a person that wasn't a mother. I sat down to wait on my husband and mom to get to the house. They arrived. We all sat in the living room and waited.

And nothing happened.

Mom went home and I went to bed, fully expecting to wake up in the middle of the night in labor.

I didn't.

Matter of fact, I didn't go into labor for two and a half more weeks.

That was a long two and a half weeks. 

I sort of gave up on ever going into labor.

Thanksgiving approached and my sister-in-law sweetly excused me from doing anything except showing up to her house. The night before Thanksgiving day we got pizza and the husband kindly watched "Legally Blonde" with me. I went to bed and slept for about an hour before I woke up with excruciating heartburn. I headed downstairs for some milk and met Allen on the stairs as he was coming up to bed. After the glass of milk I returned to bed only to find that I could not get comfortable. I tossed and turned and finally realized that I was contracting and doing so pretty regularly.

I didn't want to wake up the sleeping husband who had just fallen asleep. I turned on the television and started watching Thanksgiving episodes of old sitcoms. After a couple of hours of timing the contractons they had stayed regular, and  I knew I had to wake him up even though he had only been asleep for a short time.

We headed to the hospital and waited until 7 am to call the family.

Soon twelve family members were all in one waiting room waiting on our first child and the first grandchild, and great-grandchild, to be born.

They waited until 5:39 that afternoon.

I apologized profusely. That was a long wait.

It was worth it, though. 

I got my daughter. 

There aren't words to describe how much I love this girl. She is my heart. She takes me to the edge of my sanity. She delights me and challenges me and sanctifies me and teaches me and loves me and makes me laugh. I love being her mother and I pray that she will always be my friend. I pray that she will always be thankful that the Lord gave me to her as her mother. 

As we approach these preteen years, I sometimes find myself eyeing her with complete trepidation. We are alike enough to completely clash some days, but for the most part our desire to stay in harmony outweighs any lasting conflict. 

There are days I miss the baby that she was, but I can honestly say that I like being her mom more with each passing day. She's complex and smart. The person that she is growing into truly amazes me. She is far smarter that I ever was at her age, and I have to work hard to stay a few steps ahead of her even now. I stay amazed at how easily she retains information and how much she loves to learn. 

She is funny and makes me laugh. She is a complete klutz just like her mother. She is musical just like her daddy. She is responsible and takes care of me and her brothers too. She has her bad days, and she will always have some struggles deep within. She will have to work harder at some things than her brothers will, and there are days I pray fervently that she follows Christ all her life. 

She had a depth of spiritual knowledge that makes me so thankful for the work the Lord has done in her. I'm grateful that He saved her. I'm thankful for the work He has done in her and pray that work continues. 

I also love that this year she has a "real" birthday - she will always be a Thanksgiving baby. 

She had her voice recital last week. She did really well considering we all questioned whether or not she would actually go through with it. As I watched her with her friends on stage doing what she loves, I was proud and scared too. She's growing up. My days of parenting her are becoming less and less. I pray that she has a good foundation that will last her a lifetime. 

I'm also just really really glad that I get to be her mom.