Thanksgiving

Ahh, Thanksgiving weekend. A time to see family members, a time to eat a LOT of turkey and, of course, a time to go shopping in the MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT!!!! Let's see...where to begin? I guess we'll start with the family showing up Wednesday night. We were lucky that Lisa was feeling well enough to come up with Jeff's brother's family on Wednesday. We were expecting them around 9:30 or 10pm but didn't see them until closer to 11:30 due to some unexpected delays in traffic. We were all too tired to do much of anything except go to bed!

Thursday we woke up and made a wonderful breakfast and then started on our assignments for the Thanksgiving feast at Jeff's parents home. Abbey decided that it was her job to wake "Aunt Weetha" up. (she has a lisp) So she went into Lisa's room and jumped on her. What a wonderful start to the day! We discovered that Abbey has mastered the ability to climb up the fridge! She puts her hands on part of the handles and her foot on the freezer door and starts to climb!!! What am I going to do????? (sigh) We finished our breakfast-ing and baking and packed everyone up in the minivan and drove the 30 minutes to wait for the bird to cook. We played games, talked and generally made a mess of the toys in Grandma's house. Abbey decided that she was too busy playing to go potty and ended up wearing a diaper, contributed by Aunt Crystal, because Mommy forgot to bring spare panties. Dinner was great and it was fun to sit around and talk with everyone.

Friday morning Lisa and I got up at 3:30am and headed out into the shopping battle. We started at Kohl's because they opened first and it was COLD!!! We found what we were looking for fairly quickly but then learned that the line to check out snaked around to the back of the store! So we got in line. Of course we found things along the way as we were shuffling (very slowly) to the cash registers and so we HAD to pick them up! I always get a new pretty Christmas dress for my girls and so was on the look out for something appropriate when I spotted the perfect one! Too bad I was in line and the only one they had was on the little mannequin. Lucky for me the people around us were okay with Lisa standing in my place so that I wouldn't have to go back to the end of the line! So, I decided to get the dress off of the dummy so that I could buy it. I first pulled the dress off of her arms and then it ended up around her ankles. I couldn't figure out how to get the dumb thing off from there - it was early and brain cells don't work so great until at least 7am - Lisa told me that I should lift the dress over the head. First I had to raise her arms straight up and then I tried to get the dress off. Well, I DID manage to get something off - one of the mannequin's arms fell right onto the floor! Remember that there are about a hundred people (or more) waiting in a very long line and who were very bored and were watching me. Anyway, the dress came off and I figured out how to put the arm back on. Poor naked little mannequin. Well, I guess she still had her shoes on...

Next we went to Target. Oi. I'll never do that again. The craft store wasn't as bad and neither was Lane Bryant. We came home 5 hours after we left and after we had spent entirely too much money. Jeff had just woken up and was ready to go! He said that he wanted to go to Costco, so I went with him and "Weetha" (I just love that!) stayed home with the kids and tried desperately not to fall asleep. I didn't realize that Jeff was going to Costco to look for a new television. We looked there and then we went over to Best Buy and then went back to Costco and finally bought the dumb thing. I was so tired I was ready to sleep on the asphalt in the 30 degree weather.

That night Lisa and I decided we were going to have a girls night out. We went to dinner but had some time to kill before the movie so we went to Fred Meyer and bought a Christmas tree. I called Jeff on the cell phone and told him that I had made an impulse buy and that it was too big to fit in the van. That they had to strap it to the top of the van so we were coming home before the movie so he could unload it. This was after we had already spent way too much money shopping that morning. He just groaned and said he'd see me in a few minutes. We got home and he came out and saw the tree on the roof of the van and was very pleased at my purchase. We got a 10 foot tree for $20! I think it was the best buy of the day!

Tonight we had a dutch oven dinner for everyone at our home and also celebrated our daughter, Abbey's, birthday along with her cousin who will also have a birthday in about a week. I made a princess cake (you know, the ones with a barbie in the middle and you make the dress out of cake and frosting) and Crystal made a cake in the shape of a snake for her little boy. It was so much fun to see the kids' faces when we brought the cakes out! It was a great party. But now we've settled down and are unwinding from the crazy weekend. The family that traveled here from Utah are now in the car on their way home again. We'll miss them a lot - it was so much fun for the cousins to play together and for me to see my sister again.

I hope everyone out there had a great Thanksgiving - it's wonderful to take a few minutes to thank the Lord for all that He has blessed us with. We are so thankful to have such wonderful family members and friends that we have - so thanks for being such an important part of our lives! We love you all!

Amy

P.S. Thanks, also, to everyone who remembered our little Abbey's birthday this year.