Thanksgiving 2011

Thanksgiving break didn’t go exactly as planned at our house. We had a stomach bug make its way through each of our kids. Abby started the fun at 1:00 a.m. on Friday, Emily and Elise took their turns over the weekend, and Ben waited until Monday night to start throwing up. We were reminded that Emily should win a trophy for being the best sick kid ever. She doesn’t whine or complain and she pretty much takes care of herself. She is a dove. Her body definitely had the worst reaction to this little illness. I felt awful for her, but at the same time was glad it was her and not one of our higher maintenance kids. We kept pointing out to the other kids how good she was, hoping they would follow suit. We’ll keep working on that.

We did manage to have some fun before sickness struck and during the brief intermissions between the kids taking their turns with it. Here are some of the good parts of our weekend:

Cousin time. I took the kids with me Wednesday morning to get my hair cut and colored. Ben hung out with Jacob and played Transformers on the PS3 for a couple of hours (one of the highlights of his vacation) and the girls went with me so they could get their hair trimmed. Rachel and Bryton came along for the ride, making it loads more fun for my girls to hang out for an hour waiting for their mom.

Going to Surf-n-Swim. We had a gift certificate to Surf-n-Swim that was about to expire so we decided to make Wednesday a fun family day and use it up. Nate got off work early and we took the kids to lunch at Burger King and then hit the pool. We had a great time swimming and the kids watched a couple of racquetball matches while we ate nachos from the concession stand. They have never seen anyone play racquetball before and they thought it was super cool. As we were walking to the car, all of the lights came on in the park across the street from the pool. I think the city was just doing a trial run for their Christmas light show, but we took advantage of the good timing and made a couple of loops around the park to see the displays. It was an unexpected bonus for our trip.



Watching Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with Ben. Ben finished the book months ago and has been begging to watch the movie ever since. We put the girls to bed early on Wednesday and watched with him. It was some good parent/son bonding time.

Winterizing the yard. The weather was warm enough (upper 40s) to head outside and do a few jobs that we had been putting off. We took down the trampoline, mowed the lawn, raked the leaves, and cleared the garden. Not so much fun, but it is good to finally have it done.

Thanksgiving dinner. We had a nice time visiting with Nate’s brothers and their wives and the kids had fun playing with their cousins. It was a good day.

Shopping. We got our year’s supply of free toothpaste and toothbrushes from Walgreens, braved the Black Friday madness at JoAnns, and scored a quality deal on a new TV on Amazon (which turned into a big customer service headache due to some technical issues with their website, but it all worked out in the end).

Decorating for Christmas. We took advantage of a six hour window of no one puking to get the house ready for the holidays. I love that the kids can do a majority of the work these days. In spite of my control freak issues in other areas, I am perfectly content to let them just have at it when it comes to Christmas decorations.

Movie marathons. Since we didn’t really leave the house for three days, we got in lots of movie time. We watched Back to the Future (edited for language) and 17 Miracles as a family and the kids got their fill of Curious George and Harry Potter.

Watching The Amazing Race. For the last couple of months Jody and Sarah have been joining us for Sunday dinner and then we watch The Amazing Race together. It has been a fun new tradition and we look forward to it every week. Sarah saved the day this week when she came walking through the door carrying a barf bucket about 30 seconds before Elise needed to use it. It was funny how perfect her timing was. We love that little girl (even more for saving us the effort of shampooing the movie room carpet).