Thanksgiving 2021

Thanksgiving this year felt a little too much like last year--we were scheduled to have my sister Rosalind's family, my parents, and my grandma come visit us, but the weekend before we got sick...and just got sicker and sicker. It was a monster cold that went through our whole family and totally knocked us out, and not one we wanted to share. Rosalind, Chris, and their kids went up to Michigan to wait for us to recover...and we just kept getting sicker! Then we discovered that our cats had brought home fleas and so basically we were living in a plague house (if you've never vacuumed and deep-cleaned your entire house and washed every single washable thing while you have a fever, well, my friend, you are missing out on nothing). 

Anyway...we ended up having Thanksgiving with our little family. And we have another turkey in the freezer. :-( 

Matty brought home this cute little (very honest) paper from preschool. Pepperoni sandwiches are a big part of his life. 



Neil's birthday was on Tuesday...we were in no shape to go out and celebrate, so I made a fun charcuterie board and baked some baguettes and we had a good time. 



And by Wednesday the little boys were feeling good enough to get their second Covid shots! Hurray!!



We went on a long walk one afternoon to see the decorations downtown. 



And then started baking when we got home! 

Here's Isaac working on making my grandma's Jello while Jules stirs up a chocolate pudding pie. 

Neil working some turkey magic (we brined and spatchcocked it again this year with herb butter). 

Luke making cranberry sauce...




Jules just basically making a mess. And a pie.



Luke working on the herb butter for the turkey

Luke is always always my baking helper...he is getting so darn good at these rolls! I'm so glad Neil grabbed a picture of us together because this is one of my favorite things to share with Luke. 

Little boys setting the table...

I really loved how this came together this year; Mary Beth sent me home with the vases from their reception and I bought the floating candles in Toronto. 

Missing some people I love, but grateful to be together with people I love so dearly. 

I'm writing this on December 1st and we STILL have leftovers (that nobody is going to eat so I need to toss them). I had made quite a bit of stuff ahead of time and planned for 16 people rather than 8. Yikes! 

Time for pie and the annual Lord of the Rings marathon, which we always start after getting pie servings!



Thankfully by Thanksgiving I was recovered enough that I could do some low-effort endurance work. I still felt too weak to do any strength training, but running is basically second nature to me so I usually feel worse without it. On Thanksgiving I had to skip our friends' turkey trot (my whole family was still asleep!) so I went for a solo 10k by myself and had a pretty good cry on my run. The next day I met up with my friend Kelsey, who was visiting from Utah, and we got in 8 miles despite the cold and wind. 

Then later that day we ended up driving up to Michigan to pick some things up (like a car!) from my parents and to say goodbye to my grandma, who is moving to Utah this week. Honestly this day just wrecked me. I was so tired by the end of it (Neil and I drove up together and then drove home separately) and it was so incredibly emotionally devastating for me to see my extended family for such a short period of time and not know when I would see them again. 

But I'm still glad we were able to go and spend an hour with my grandma. 

 

And that I was able to take a picture of this plaque in the hall honoring my grandpa. 




I'm really excited for her move to Utah--I think it will be SO amazing for her!!!!--but gosh it's going to be weird knowing that she's 24 hours away instead of 3! I'm so grateful for technology that makes it easier to stay close. 

Momentous

Right now we are trying to make one of the biggest decisions we will (likely) ever make in the life of our family. I have cried and prayed and rejoiced and cried and sobbed and and prayed some more so, so, so many times in the last week. I don't know how the heck I would be surviving this right now without Neil by my side.

And my baby had an EEG and I cried a lot more. 

It's really crazy around here. So much has happened. So, so, so much, even just in regular daily life. There is so much to blog about, but right now I am barely staying afloat (also before all this stuff came up we signed all the kids up for spring sports, and I literally did not even imagine that there would be 3 games per week per kid so I will let you just do the math on that one for a minute).

I have to go do my yoga now for my rotated/tilted pelvis (another fun story) so I'm just going to leave this picture from a few weeks ago when I set a new PR for the half-marathon and had just the best time running with my kids. Every time I look at this photo it makes me so happy--it's the background and lock screen on my phone because I want to feel like Luke did on this day, and it reminds me to try to find the good in all of this right now. 

Day 6

No post yesterday because I felt like death (thanks, head cold) and pretty much all I accomplished was making meals and getting my biking/yoga in. That knocked me out for the day and I went to bed as soon as the kids did!

1) Slept in today, hallelujah, sing the weekend praises! In 5 school days we had 4 early-morning appointments, and I do not love having to be somewhere at 7 am. But now we're through dental and orthopedic and parent-teacher conference appointments, and that is a lovely lovely thing.

2) Neil and I had a lovely little 6-mile run together today. It was beautiful weather--about 40 degrees and so sunny and gorgeous that by about 2 miles in I was perfectly comfortable in tights and a short-sleeve shirt. Amazing for February, given that last year at this time it was -40.

3) Today I ate dessert for the first time in three weeks (that may not sound impressive, but it feels that way to me!). It was delicious, since it was Neil's famous chocolate-chip cookies, and now I'm good for another few weeks.

4) Every month or so we have Classic Movie Night, a.k.a. we watch a movie as a family on the computer so that our kids aren't completely clueless about some of the really great movies out there. :-) I love not actually having a TV in our home, but I also really enjoy these nights. Tonight we watched The Man From Snowy River and Nathan (above) was so incredibly enamored of the cowboys' attire that he wore that outfit to bed and talked about "brumbies" the rest of the evening. (Previous nights have included The Love Bug, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St. Louis, Back to the Future, Star Wars, and The Music Man). I'd love to hear what movies you consider to be must-sees!

5) I am really thankful for my Neti squirt bottle. It's so much more effective than the Neti pot and we've been inseparable buds the last few days. And on that note, I've got a date with the squirt bottle and a giant stack of tissues and a couple quarts of water--I have been so thirsty the last two days!

Broken leg: the goodies and the baddies

So this is probably kind of a downer post, but I want to record it so I can be grateful once it's over. And I wanted to record both the goods and the bads (or goodies and baddies as we call them at dinner when we're all reporting on how our individual days went).

Baddies first so we can get them out of the way!

• Any weight-bearing activity is painful. Not just exercise, but walking around my house.
• A room with toys or books on the floor is terrifying. I can't lift my foot high enough to easily avoid things, my gait is different, and if I accidentally step on something it's guaranteed that I'll fall down.
• I can't drive without intense pain and slowed reactions. I pick Juliet and Isaac up from school every day, since the bus no longer goes to our home, and fortunately our school is only a mile from our house and I don't have to get out of the car and walk to get them, so I just wear running shoes instead of the boot and then change back as soon as I get home. But it's absolutely not safe or possible to drive with the boot on, which means I am homebound unless Neil is around to drive me somewhere, and with all the kids, it's just easier to not go anywhere.
• Sitting is very painful. Last Sunday the double-header of 3 hours of church and 3 hours driving home from Thanksgiving was almost unbearable. I was crying by the time we got home and I lay awake most of the night from pain; Monday was very hard, and now it's Wednesday and I'm still feeling it.
• Everything takes me two or three times longer to do it, and the needs of my family have not slowed or changed. It's very exhausting, added to which I can't physically be on my feet all day without a ton of pain, but I still am because meals need to be made, children need to be cared for, dishes need to be washed, laundry needs to be done, etc., and there's a real limit to how much Neil and the older children can do when they're home. I try to sit down for an hour in the morning with the boys to read and another hour in the afternoon during naptime while I work on my laptop, but other than that I'm on my feet from getting up in the morning to going to bed at night--usually around midnight because I'm behind on so many things since I move so slowly. 
• I am always in pain. I've been hurting nonstop since August, so it's not new for my right side, but my left side is getting pretty agonizing since it's having to compensate for the right side. My left knee is the worst--I can hear it creaking and popping when I move. 
• I can't walk outside, go up and down stairs, or handle any uneven terrain. This means that I can't do something as simple as collect the eggs from the chickens (and I keep forgetting to ask Neil or one of the older kids to do it!). It also means--much more tragic to my mind--that I can't do many of our normal Christmas traditions, like visiting the candy-cane factory or spending a day at the Children's Museum.
  

And on to the goodies:

• Neil, as always, is amazing. He doesn't complain at all about all of the extra things he is doing that I normally do, and he never reproaches me or comments on the fact that dinner is generally not ready when he gets home, or I call him in tears asking if he can come home a little earlier than usual, or the house is not exactly in its regular condition. 
• I had been driving a friend's little boy home from preschool twice a week (Neil takes Luke in the morning). Now my friend is driving Luke home those two days and I only have to worry about getting him home on the third day--this helps so much!!
• Not running has given me more free time. I've been able to read a lot more and taken on some extra editing work.
• My doctor told me I could walk a couple of miles if I felt up to it. Turns out that was a HUGE mistake and I hurt soooo bad afterwards, but during the walk it was completely blissful and I got to spend an hour outside with Neil over the Thanksgiving break, which never happens and I reveled in every moment of it. 
• My kids are really great about helping and understanding that I need them to pitch in even more than they normally do. Some do it without even being asked whereas some need a little prodding. 
• Online shopping!! I can't even imagine trying to pull off Christmas shopping if I had to go to brick and mortar stores and the post office. It just would not happen. We are barely making it to the grocery store as it is!!

Right now my main worry is that I'm not healing well enough because I just haven't been able to rest, and that this pain is indicative of the healing process not going very well, especially since I've been wearing the boot for two weeks now and I go back for a checkup in two more. I think ideally I would be off my feet most of the day, whereas the reality is that if I sit down twice in a day, it's HUGE. I have started sitting down for breakfast/lunch though, which I never do, so that's something, right? 

Catching up on June

Oh goodness, I feel like there's a lot of catching up to do! I can't believe we are already three weeks into summer vacation--I feel like we have spent so much time just being sick! (And now three of the kids have sore throats--me too--darn it!) My poor kids have inherited weak respiratory systems from both parents, but fortunately they have learned to be good sports about it. 

But while we have spent a lot of days playing Legos, reading, jumping on the trampoline, and eating popsicles in our self-imposed quarantine, we have ventured out a few times! And I must say that I feel like I am much less energetic than I've been in past summers, but I don't know if that's because I have been so sick too, or if I've been just running a lot even while being sick (98 miles so far in June with ten days left to go, and I start official marathon training on July 6th, so I am trying to make sure I run at least 33 miles a week, since that is what I will run the first week of training). I've been trying to be creative about fitting it in without infringing too much on family time--so today, for instance, I got up when everyone else was still sleeping and ran 12 miles so I could meet Neil & the kids at the cherry orchard--I was so happy to be done with my run that I didn't take any orchard photos! Oops. Basically it was like this plus three more kids (and a lot more bugs!).

Anyway, here's some of what we've been doing on the occasions when everyone has simultaneously felt well enough to venture out for a few hours. 

One of the most exciting things happened the day after school got out--we had some baby raccoons show up at our house! (Photo credits go to Jules...hence the camera strap in the picture. I was busy trying to shoo them away from the door so we could get back inside the house and admittedly screaming like a baby every time they hissed at me.) So then we had this very long huge dramatic episode trying to find a place for these abandoned raccoons that was NOT our porch (there were three and they just kept running around the house from the front to the back, and hissing at us like crazy). We finally found a rehabilitator who could take them the next day, so Neil gloved up and put them all into a plastic tote and Isaac made them some scrambled eggs. They were sort of cute but they smelled SO bad and I was thrilled to drop them off the next day with the rehabilitator. 

A few hours after the raccoons departed, we had some much more welcome visitors--one of my BYU roommates and her family spent the night with us on their way to Utah! It was the first time I've seen her since we lived together in 2002, so it was really fun to catch up and let the kids play together. We even got to go running on my favorite trail! And darn it, I completely forgot to take any pictures--Luke was already sick and I was starting to come down with it, so I wasn't at 100% mentally.

I can't remember when I took these photos--I know it was a Saturday that Neil was at the lab, because I remember that I was alone in the woods with all the kids and the tornado sirens went off for the monthly test. Fun stuff! At least our kids are so used to living in tornado country that they looked at the sky, asked me the date, and then kept on walking.

The big kids did vacation Bible school again this summer and LOVED it! It came at the perfect time when Luke and I were both really not feeling well, so it was wonderful for Abs, Jules, and Isaac to have something fun to do in the mornings while Luke and I were lying on the floor in our pajamas trying to summon up the strength to read another book. :-) Sadly, Juliet and Isaac got sick the last day (and I had Abigail stay home too), so they didn't get to perform in their final program nor did we get any pictures. But here's one from last year (wow, we did a lot of fun things that week!)

One day last week we went to the snake show at the library--Abigail had been counting down the days to this since she reeeaaallly wants a pet snake and I reeeaaally told her that she can't have one until she has her own place to live. But we will visit other snakes.

I think Isaac took this photo. Nathan and I were at the snake show! I think this was right after the guy asked me to help hold the 15-foot python, and I stood up to go help, and Nathan went absolutely crazy at the idea that I might be four feet away. So I held a teary-eyed Nathan instead of a python. Much more cuddly.

Part of the snake I didn't hold (but I held it last year at the same show when I was also asked to help, and Nathan was small enough not to mind, so I didn't miss much this year).

We also had a delightful interlude at our local children's museum yesterday, but I forgot my camera, so we'll have to go back sometime soon (seriously, this place is my favorite--$60 for an annual family pass and it gets us into all the Chicago museums too!). 

 

One night last week the girls were super bummed to miss their riding lesson (those darn fevers!) and I literally could not take one more evening home with sick kids, so we took advantage of the heat and went to the campus fountains. Super fun!





Although those feverish little kids did get pretty cold pretty fast (but then they warmed back up and ran out again).



After we were done with the fountains, we used our summer reading coupons for free Coldstone ice cream. Yum yum! Much more pleasant way to spend an evening than lying around the house being sick (that weird stage of recovery where you feel well enough to actually do a few things but you're not well enough to be in close contact with anyone, so the fountains were perfect!).

And speaking of water, we have had SO MUCH RAIN. This is our street one day last week. We had probably ten days where it rained every day, and then one day it was like the drainage system suddenly couldn't handle one more drop and this happened. I have very low hopes for my poor garden this year--it's just spent too many days in a state of perpetual flood. :-(

And speaking of floods, one of the things on our summer bucket list this year was to attend Kids' Day at our local(ish) branch of the Erie Canal, since kids ride the canal boat free on one day a year. So after the 12-mile run and the cherry orchard, we headed over with a picnic lunch and got there to find that Kids' Day was cancelled due to flooding--argh! (NOT posted on their website...nice job, guys). Apparently the canal was three feet higher than usual, which meant it was so high that the boat could neither exit the boathouse, nor could it get under the bridge. It was kind of a bummer to miss the boat ride and all of the associated events, but we still spent a fun couple of hours wandering around.

And the full-size canal boat replica which had been turned into a playground was a HUGE hit!

While we were walking around the replica town (everything was locked up since the festival had been postponed) a very nice man who was gardening offered to take us on a trolley ride and tell us about the history of the canal and point out different features. So we had a private tour and the kids absolutely loved it!

This is the boathouse--can you see a dock? Nope? Yeah, that's why there is no boat ride right now.

I was there!

Some blurry photos of my darling Nater-tot.

Some more of the floodwaters...typically the canal is 4 feet deep, 40 feet wide at the top, and 26 wide at the bottom. We learned that it was illegal (and strictly enforced!) for boats carrying passengers to travel at more than 4 mph, while boats carrying freight were restricted to 2 mph. If they went faster, the wake deteriorated the canal banks. I didn't get a photo of the terminus, since we never had a good angle, but this is actually the location where they stopped digging this particular branch of the canal system, since they ran out of funding and then the railroad took over (the canal site in our own town is currently occupied by Amtrak).

The city still maintains 10 miles of towpaths, which are now used for biking, walking, running, etc. (Sidenote: I was REALLY bummed that the guy renting surreys quit doing so this year, since I was more excited about renting the 8-person surrey than I was about riding the boat!)

If you are really into canals you can read about our trip to Lockport, NY (right by Niagara Falls) here. I grew up in Ohio and we did lots of field trips to the canals & locks so I quite enjoy replicating the experience with my kids. :-) (Minus the secret passages in all the Underground Railroad homes that are all over the place in Ohio, which were WAY cool to check out on school field trips!)

A few of the replica structures...

And our wonderful tour guide who made sure that each of our kids had a chance to ring the trolley bell.

Nathan was so in love with this windmill and couldn't stop talking about it. Cute kid.

The girls found a seesaw near the one-room schoolhouse and had a blast playing on it before we ate lunch.

And then we went to their museum, which was surprisingly fun, interactive, and detailed.

Isaac loved guessing which types of fur belonged to which animal...

The girls were fascinated by the replica shanty that would have housed the families of the men who worked on actually creating the canals.

EVERYONE was in love with the water area that allowed you to guide a canal boat through the locks.

And boy howdy did they have fun with the 1830s dressups!

Isaac only wears dressups if it's Halloween, so he was over checking out the tools section.  

And on our way out we pretended to be oxen & mules dragging the canal boat behind us. All seven of us could not budge that darn thing one centimeter, thanks to a winter's worth of silt buildup all around it! Guess we'll just have to go back another time.