Thanksgiving Weekend 2012

Wednesday:
So, I go to pick Zach up from school and they are all hidden in the back classroom. My philosophy is always "as long as it's safe and legal I'm good". Sure enough, Zach said they were watching a Thanksgiving movie. When we got home the first thing Zach said is "Can I watch the parade tomorrow?" Answer, "absolutely!" After his nap we took a walk. We have been taking this route lately and we both really enjoy it. I asked about which Thanksgiving DVD they watched at school and it originally sounded like "Rug Rats" but when he saw a picture of Charlie Brown later he perked up and said "that's it, that's what we saw in school". Apparently, that 4-5 year old classroom is like Vegas, "what happens in Jen's classroom STAYS in Jen's classroom". It's where they practiced for the Mother's and Father's Day shows. It's out of sight of the observation window that's by the entrance. Next year, that will be his classroom. As long as he doesn't drink too much juice and get married, I'm good.

Thursday:
He woke up at 8:30 hoping to watch the parade and disappointed that it wasn't on until 9. He was also disappointed with all the talking they do but liked the music, cheerleaders, and dancing. We had to call him into the room for each performance then he ran back into his room to play. I made a Good Housekeeping recipe for Acorn Squash from the November issue of this year. The recipe is below. When I first got the November issue of Good Housekeeping I looked at the recipes for a complete Thanksgiving dinner and wanted to make it. My mom makes Thanksgiving so we go there but she let me make this so I can do a little something. It was popular so I'll make that for Thanksgiving in the future. I plan to have my own Good Housekeeping Thanksgiving in February to use the free turkey Josh got from work.

I had set the table on Wednesday and when we got to my mom's house for dinner received a lot of compliments on it. I decided to embrace the "two tables put together" concept and decorate them as two different tables rather then trying to make them look like one really long table. Dinner was delicious and Zach was wonderful, as always. After dinner we took a long family walk for exercise. Yes, Norma came too since she was part of the family, at least to Zach. We're still deciding about how much of that we are willing to go along with. At least he's still using the word "pretending" sometimes.

Acorn Squash Recipe:
http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/recipefinder/orange-dijon-roasted-acorn-squash-recipe-ghk1112?click=rec_sr

Friday:
The boys grocery shopped while I took a long walk then brought the decorating day decorations inside. I decorate on the 1st and since it's December it also means a season change, Fall becomes Winter, so that meant a lot more decorations then usual. In past years, I would decorate while they shop before we put the Christmas tree up but since June I've gone back to the 1st instead of the last Saturday of the month before. That's because Zach is old enough to help so if he's home I can still do it. We planned on doing the tree after Zach's nap but we were all just too tired for it. They took Daddy time and I mixed CDs.

Saturday:
My Dad's birthday was November 2nd but he doesn't want stuff he wants labor so Josh and I worked on his birthday present in the morning. I have some things against a wall in what used to be my dance space at his house. It was a mess so before restacking the boxes I went through them and reorganized my teaching books. That's how they got messy, me looking for certain books. I mentioned before that a long time ago I wanted to be a teacher and worked at a teacher store. This was 7 - 9 years ago. I collected favorite books while working there. Some of them are workbooks and with Zach actually in school it was time to make them easily accessible for years to come. The wall looks great now and the books I actually need to get to are easy to get to without moving things again and creating a mess again. I have some books to donate to Zach's school. As Zach gets older his future teachers might also find themselves with free books.

Later on Saturday, I started a project redoing some of my exercise routines. My joints in general have been sore, especially my knees, so I needed optional routines for rough days. I think it might be Arthritis but I can still do things. While doing that, I thought it would be fun to create a gym routine and a dance routine with Christmas music. The dance routines aren't choreographed but I do have to get a feel for if the music matches the movements. However, the gym routines are choreographed so that took a while to do. It was a lot of fun though!

Sunday:
That brings us to today. This morning Josh brought in the fake tree from the garage and the boys set it up. This year we're just doing lights and garland since last year Zach kept taking off and moving the ornaments. I took the orange lights and pumpkin yard decorations (that light up) to the garage since they would have looked weird with the tree and put up the Winter window lights (white twinkling) and the Winter Yard decorations (light up twinking snowflakes and light up pine leaves). Now the rest of the place looks weird decorated for Fall when the living room has moved on to Winter. It's still five days away from the first though so it seems too soon to do the rest. We moved to doing the tree Thanksgiving weekend when I was decorating on the last Saturday of the month (which became that Friday for Thanksgiving week because of when the boys grocery shop.) Now that I'm back to decorating on the first we agreed in future years to do the tree the weekend after/of decorating day. But the rest of the house has to be changed to December and Winter first. I'll probably decorate the rest of the house early, Wednesday or Thursday, when Zach's in school. But I'm going to try to just deal with it until Saturday. For a normal person this isn't a problem but for someone with OCD nothing is in it's place and that really rattles the nerves. I want to apologize to Josh in advance because something tells me he'll be hearing about this a lot over the next few days.

This morning I woke up to another odd dream. I was pregnant and later in the dream went into labor in the elevator because they made me wait too long before admitting me. Zach's delivery took 7 hours and usually additional labors go quicker so that part made sense. Later in the dream the newborn girl is in my arms at my parent's house. We are all celebrating the birth and Zach is an attentative big brother, like he is with Norma. The baby's face looks just like Zach's.

I really don't know what sets these things off. I joke about the double egg thing but let's be realistic, some chickens are given the chicken version of fertility drugs to make more eggs which means more money. Like with humans, fertility treatments are more likely to lead to multiples. So what is really the source of all this? I honestly don't know. I haven't changed my behavior and haven't thought about another baby since June. All of this truly came from out of the blue. We plan and God laughs. I'm taking the pill like I'm supposed to each day but this is all so strange it gives me pause.

One possibility is that my brother got engaged a month ago. He also spent Thanksgiving with his future in-laws. These dreams could mean a few things:

1. The only other big event I could possibly have in my life is another baby. Maybe this is in response to the big event going on in his life, a longing for something equally as big going on in mine.

2. I remember holding my brother the day he was born. At the time, even our Grandma and Babysitter couldn't come into the room so I felt special being able to be in there and hold him. He was half my size that day, I was almost four! He's a second child and my dreams are about a second child.

3. Some things we aren't meant to know. God is full of surprises.

I love my brother but not all my memories of him are of him being wonderful. I miss him, he's around less, but he's been other places on past Thanksgivings and so I doubt it's that. It might be the "big event" reason but I am thrilled for them. I have mentioned in the past that it does make me sad that I'll never have any reason to be celebrated beyond my birthday (which no one wants to celebrate other then me, Josh, and Zach) but as I think about it, that might not be the case. I'm 32 there is a lot of life yet and I don't really know what's down the road for me. I have moved past this need for something big. There is just too much uncertainty in life to get upset about that since I don't know what will happen in the future. I might have at least one other big moment again.

A silly dream I used to have is that someone like a talk show host or a publisher will stumble across this blog and want to interview me or offer me a book deal. Far fetched? Absolutely! But it's not impossible. Sometimes I used to picture this blog leading to a TLC reality show about living with OCD and GAD leading to me being on Dancing With the Stars which is funny because I don't watch that show. But my degree is in Dance and those dreams stopped when I created my dance routine. That's why I created the dance routine, because I thought those dreams were telling me I missed dancing. I was right.

As for the interview or book deal, in those dreams I talk about my parenting, marriage, eating disorder, miscarriages, and living with OCD and GAD. These are big moments in my life and topics that I now am knowledgeable about. The key is this blog since that's how I got the attention to begin with in these dreams.There are people who's blogs lead to being published or interviews but that seems unlikely to happen to me. Things like that never happen to me. In these dreams no one questions my knowledge about these topics. Being a SAHM I often get treated like I must not know about stuff because I'm not employed. But these dreams stopped recently with one comment from my dad, "You really are quite knowledgeable about this gardening stuff". I know I still have a long way to go but it was nice to be seen as someone who gets asked questions about certain topics instead of always being the one asking the questions. Similar things have happened with cooking and decorating too.

That's why figuring out these second baby dreams are so important to me. I mentioned before the mind never shuts off with General Anxiety Disorder. Welcome to my head! You're probably lost but entertained! My quirkiness tends to do that.

Apparently, the baby dreams are not over. I'll keep you posted on how things go. It's part of the journey of life. I don't know the reasons for these dreams, all I have are possibilities, but none of them seem to fit. They make sense but I just get the feeling that I haven't thought of the right reason yet. It doesn't seem complete yet.

It was a fun weekend and the best part was seeing so much of my family. Thanksgiving is about being thankful but we need to remember to be thankful frequently throughout the year. I frequently list all the things I am thankful for so I won't bore you with that list again. Especially since it's a predictable list. So I'll leave you with this interesting Franny-like encounter.

We went to Burger King for lunch today. A large Indian family was there and I spent the whole lunch curious about what they could eat at Burger King. The Indian friends we have will eat cheese and eggs but not meat. So I asked them what they order at Burger King. This particular family eats chicken but not beef although one member was a born again Christian and said he loves beef. It's interesting to learn about other cultures and religions.