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. 

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.

Easter

My daughter looked at me during the course of our Easter celebration and said, "Mom, I can't remember last Easter. What did we do?"

Hm. I remembered we went to church at night that Sunday, but that was it. 

"I don't remember," I answered. 

"Aw," she said, sadly.

I decided this was incentive enough to document this Easter. And life more, really. I need to do that for them, and for me. 

So this was Easter. 

We started off at church with the 8 am service. I liked this much better than the night church we did last year. I think I would love a sunrise service even. I'm fine with our church not offering that - I just like the "early" morning aspect of being at church celebrating on Resurrection Sunday. I think being worshipping as the sun rises would be something I'd like to try one day.

Worship was so sweet. A long, intensive study in my own Bible study time in the weeks before Easter  of the time in Jesus' life between the anointing of Him in Bethany until His ascension had been simply amazing. I hope to write another post about that soon, so I won't say much about it now, but all of that study had me so excited to worship with other believers about the beautiful life saving miracle of that Sunday morning. 

It was good. 

I had gotten smart and done most of the pre-cooking for our brunch on Saturday. I even put the food in the oven Sunday morning before we left for church, and set the timer for the oven to come on an hour before we got home so that everything would be heated up and almost ready for us to eat. I'm not sure what possessed me to be so organized and well planned. (It was a total accident, I assure you.) 

 My sweet sister cooked the bacon. It's her job every year, we figured out. She doesn't mind. She's good at it. 

My daughter told me that one of her friend's mom makes home-made orange rolls. While I'm sure that this makes me a bad mother, Sister Schubert's orange rolls are one of my most favorite things in the world. So much so that I took a picture of them. 

They are my favorite. 

I think I said that already. 

We ate and talked and even Bella got to be in on the conversation.

She got no orange rolls, though. I'm sure this made her sad.

She even looks a little sad. 

I think I was a little tired by this point. It was all that cooking the day before. 

And the 7 hours of church I went to on Friday night.

It was also a continuation of my birthday.

 That is always a good thing. 

After brunch, we just relaxed and talked some more. 

The middle kid held his own in a game of Scrabble against the middle sister, with some help from her sweet husband. 

Mimi and the girl kid planned a wedding with a wedding planning DS game. 

They both enjoyed that. 

I'm not sure how much of a contribution the baby kid was to the planning of the nuptials, but he enjoyed the snuggling. 

He then decided that playing Cooties with Dad was a better option. 

They both ended up making the same face. 

After pursuing Twitter, I saw so many sweet family pictures of friends in their Easter outfits. 

I recalled the days when I not only preplanned the kids' outfits, but took time to document them in said outfits. 

Like this:

And this remains my all time favorite Easter picture of all time. (It's worth saying "all time" twice) This is so our family. And this is also probably the reason that I stopped taking Easter pictures. 

But I'm glad I have this one. 

It's my favorite. 

I love it so much that I can't even stop looking at it. 

Anyway...

This is how we do family pictures now:

That little kid (trying to dart out of the picture there on the left) isn't the best photographer, but he's still hilariously funny. 

And a stinker. When it was time to get dressed Sunday morning, instead of just letting the boys get dressed out of their "church clothes drawer" (which is really just nicer shorts and tee shirts) I dug out some nice pants and shirts for a change. 

You know, since it was Easter. 

This kid didn't want to wear his "Easter pants" and shirt. After a few minutes of a struggle, I said, "FINE" and he went and got some of his usual church clothes. Then he couldn't get the shorts buttoned and in my quick frustration in trying to get them buttoned, I bled all over his shorts and shirt. (Note to self, when you cook for Easter the day before, and you decide to use the nice, new sharp knives that a sweet friend gave you instead of the dull knives you got as a wedding present 16 years ago, they will probably actually slice things quickly and easily instead of you having to saw through things with muscle and force. This also includes, unfortunately, your finger that you failed to remove from the path of the knife that will even the next day still bleed without a second's notice.) After this speed bump in the dressing game, I lost my patience and sweetly said yelled, "GO PUT ON THE EASTER PANTS AND SHIRT" and then locked myself in my room so I could brush my hair and teeth and smash myself in my own new birthday/Easter dress and get to church before it was over. 

I just wanted that documented for posterity's sake. 

The family left late in the afternoon, and we all changed and headed outside. I went for a run to try to work off some of the 8.3 million calories I had just consumed (thank you, Sister Schubert) and then collapsed into my new birthday hammock with my new book that the nice people at the 7 hour church service gave out. 

It was a little light reading. 

With a few thoughts to ponder. 

The guys played football and grilled out hot dogs and hamburgers and loved on the neighborhood cat that insists on thinking that she lives here. 

Not everyone is okay with her thinking that. 

That stinky little kid, now safely wearing clothes of his choice, and I laughed and played. 

And showed each other our muscles. 

Then this big kid came home from a neighborhood friend's house, and I wondered if she grew in the couple of hours that she was gone. 

This is also another post brewing in my head. 

The day ended with some tears from a way too tired kid, but I got to snuggle a sleepy, warm person who will all too soon be gone. 

I won't write that post yet. 

It was a sweet, precious Resurrection Sunday. I'm so thankful for God's gift to us in Christ, and for Christ's obedience to His Father in giving His life on the cross. It's the only reason I live. And I'm eternally grateful.