thankful

it's over a week late, but i still want to share about thanksgiving - it was a great day for us! this was the first year since eric and i've been married that we haven't been with at least one of our families on this holiday. because of the way our vacation schedules were for for, we all only had thursday off. he had wednesday, too, and i had friday. but only 1 shared day - not long enough to travel to garland with two pre-schoolers. especially since one's kaleb!

it turned out to be a light wednesday in surgery, so i actually took off from wednesday through the weekend, and had 6 stay-at-home days in a row! the kid were out of school thursday and friday, so wednesday was spent in the kitchen baking all day. it was great!

we went over to the house of our pastor and his wife, with just one other joining us - so 5 adults and 7 kids. it was nice and low-key. all contributed to the massive lunch we served, we ate on paper plates, then sat back to enjoy a little fellowship while the kids all played upstairs. about 3pm, it was FINALLY nap time for kaleb, so we came home and all took a nap. thursday night, some of our friends, allen and mo, stopped by the house to visit for a bit, but we were all so stuffed we didn't need dinner!

the kids and i steered clear of black friday, but did some saturday shopping instead - and no great deals were missed by delaying a day. barnes and noble, best buy, target. then chick-fil-a for lunch. kaleb fell asleep in the cart at target, so we picked up chick-fil-a, ran some up to eric at work, then went home and had a great girls' lunch.

the peyton's came over saturday afternoon for a spontaneous park playdate, and they ended up hanging around until bedtime - so thankful for the fun! the kids played and watched movies, the adults played carcassone. kaleb decided not to eat dinner, but rather to be fussy, clingy, and want a bath and bed. he ended up running a medium-high temp all night and was up a couple of times during the night, sweating through his pjs. poor baby! no other symptoms, though, so all i can figure isa bit of teething (his i teeth are coming in, so maybe that's it...).

eric worked sunday morning, and with kaleb's fever of unknown origin (an official medical term :) ) the kids and i skipped church. i hated to be the family who infected all others with something we didn't know we had. we got out sunday afternoon for an early dinner with allen and mo to celebrate allen's birthday, and then home to get ready to return to school/work for the first time in a long time!

although we really missed time with family, eric and i reflected on how nice it was to be so relaxed and with no agenda for the weekend. it allowed us to spend extended time with friends that we normally don't have because of chaos of work and school and everyday life. perhaps that's wrong...perhaps we should aim for more of that thankfulness for people and spending time with them than we should the hustle and bustle of life as we know it...i hope to head into the Christmas season with this thankful attitude and enjoy the extra excuses for getting together with others (parties and school programs and family gatherings and all) to really enjoy the relational aspect of the get-togethers.

and in my attempt to share pictures of the day, i discovered i've maxed out my storage space here on the blog. but i did upload the thanksgiving pics to facebook...check them out (there aren't many, but one of kaleb in his hat makes me laugh every time i look at it. he's such a ham!)