Oh...Fanks...

It has felt like Saturday the last 2 days.....and it isn't even Saturday yet.

When you don't have company for the holidays, sometimes you forget that it is the holidays. Even the AP went to Washington DC for vacation, so it was just the 4 of us. So sorry that I didn't get to show my thanks and gratitude to everyone that is important in my life, The Sister on the West Coast, The Brother on the East Coast, The Dad in the Far East, and The Mom on her way to the Far East for their annual Medical Mission Trip. This also includes all my readers and especially those who comment. You truly mean more to me than you may ever know. Thanks for the support, advice, and fellowship. I look forward to your thoughts on a daily basis. As The Younger would say (when we fulfill a request), "Oh....Fanks!"

Wednesday evening we went to the Fantasy of Trees. I'll have a slideshow of that on our Picasa site and on the sidebar once I have them all downloaded from the 3 cameras we had there. We did wait in line to see Santa...we hadn't done that since The Elder was 2 himself and he did NOT like it. As a matter of fact we keep that picture of him in distress on the man's lap on the oven with a magnetic frame. I don't know why really, I guess we just never took it down. Now the kids don't really get the whole Santa bit. We have been kind of indifferent about the concept. We don't keep Santa from them, we just don't make a great big deal about it. So when I asked if they wanted to get their picture taken with Santa, I knew The Younger was completely clueless to what he was actually agreeing to do. We stood in line anyway, juuuuust in case we could pull it off. They did pretty good standing in line considering they are 2 and 4 and the line was slow. The Hub was standing by with his camera to snap their picture so we didn't have to buy one. (That was legitimate, they were actually allowing personal photographers, but had their own photographer in case we wanted to buy.) Well, as we were waiting in line as the next one up, one's of Santa's "elves" (bless her heart) in an attempt to get the kids excited, may have just triggered the meltdown. It was 20 questions in 20 seconds, "What's your name? how old are you? what do you want for Christmas? are you ready to get your picture? are you excited about Santa?......" The Elder just looked away and collapsed into a little puddle on the floor right then and there. It was a quiet meltdown thank the Lord. But then there was The Younger, very vocal and very loud. He took one look at Santa and the whole convention center knew that he was NOT happy and there was NO way he was going to get even CLOSE to that skeerwy red man. But I really wanted to get their picture taken since we had 1) waited in line that long with success (up to that point) 2) dressed them so adorably in the same "Mister Roger's" sweaters and 3) we didn't have an appointment to get official Christmas pictures taken in time for Christmas.

The Solution? Me and The Hub had to get in the picture and hold them in our laps. You can tell we were not expecting to be a part of a portrait that night --- we usually like to coordinate a little better (and use a hairbrush). But hey, we got it and it has a great story behind it. The Younger is exhibiting his nervous tic of picking at his fingertips (or someone's fingertips). The Elder was actually OK, and gave Santa a high five before we left, I think he was just overwhelmed with the elf. The Younger....just not happy all around.


Thanksgiving Day, The Hub and I left the house at 6:30am for the annual Autumnfest 8K. I haven't run it since 2003 when The Elder was born, but have volunteered every year since then in honor of my "Papa" who passed away in 2000. The Hub was assigned registration so we were there early. I was assigned the finishline, so I was recruited to play chef for some food prepping for post race munching and then ended up having to take over with Registration too because there were sooo many day-of-race registrants that The Hub might have actually missed the race had he not left! I was glad that I got to do more than the finishline, but I really like working the finish and being a "pusher" because it is pretty fast paced and also fun to boss people around who don't know who you are but they listen to you anyway, and I also like being their cheerleader and telling them how great they did. We didn't have any pukers, so it was a good race, however it did rain the entire time so I was wet and hoarse and came home probably just as tired as the Hub who actually ran the race.

The rest of Thanksgiving was a little blurry. I think I fell asleep on the couch reading Look Me in the Eye. And I know I got up to help cook dinner (The Hub is the official Chef in the House. I'm just the assistant). It was interesting this year to keep it GFCF. The kids didn't like the turkey, but The Elder didn't mind the "chicken." (Cue: Evil Laugh) I think the tryptophan hit us all early...the kids were asleep by 7:15 and I think I started to fall asleep on the couch again while The Hub and I were trying to decide if we wanted to brave Black Friday or not.

We didn't. The Hub slept in and for the first time in a LOOOOONG time I had both kids to myself all morning. It was actually nice. We made Oatmeal, and ate Breakfast together, then started playing together. Then they were watching a DVD and I found myself waking up on the couch. Boy that tryptophan is merciless. Once The Hub was up we started decorating the Kids' tree. I think we decided since we weren't going to be here for the holidays that we would just do their tree and not put up the big one. This was the first year that we got to do some really fun decorating and we painted macaroni (some gluten pasta that we saved for projects) and strung it on fishing line. It was a great sensory and fine motor skills activity for them. The Younger was disinterested in stringing but enjoyed the macaroni maraca we made for him (until he dumped all th pasta in the floor). After that, another blur. I woke up to The Elder screaming and I came running into the kitchen. Short-lived food-related meltdown that ended up in nakedness but thank goodness no urine. Once the kids were asleep, it was The Hubs turn to nap, and I finished the book, which didn't seem like "work" at all. It was very entertaining, yet informative and pertinent to our circumstances. Here's a comment I left on BEYOND Understanding about the book...

"I loved the book too. It is the first book I have read every single word from cover to cover in less than a week in my entire life! It truly brought a lot of insight to what goes on in The Hub and the Elder's brain. It also gives me tremendous hope."

We sound soooooo lazy. But I think the Super Doc would be happy that we had a stress free Thanksgiving. So my apologies for letting the occasion pass without proper acknowledgments, and I hope that everyone had a wonderful day!