I've been slacking on keeping up with my blog lately but I will shamelessly use the chemo to excuse the absence. Truthfully, the treatments seem to be falling into a pattern. I take it on Friday night and am out of the running until Wednesday morning. I spend most of my time in either bed or on the couch, dozing or full out sleeping my days away. By Wednesday I am almost back to normal though any activity (such as grocery shopping) is bound to wipe me out and require a three hour nap afterwards.
Beyond the treatments, the last week and a half has been full of parent/teacher conferences, cheer, a girls night out (dinner and the final Twilight movie with my bestie), lots and lots of food prep and baking for Thanksgiving, the actual holiday, putting up the Christmas tree, our annual tradition of watching The Grinch with the family, a 16th birthday party for our teenager, and a date with my hubby. Lots of fun, good food and even better company was had.
I made Pilgrim cupcakes
An Irish Cream cheesecake
And two pumpkin pies for the weekend.
We always put our tree up on Thanksgiving. The two youngest help daddy sort the branches and spread them out for ease of assembly. After dinner, we let them have at the ornaments. Of course...we always have to go back and do some rearranging!
Amazingly enough, everyone got along fabulously this weekend!
I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!
One of the things that is important to hubby & I is that we build fun family traditions to share with our kids. Some traditions are small and simple, like going to church every weekend or having pizza every Friday night. Others are typical like having a family game night. What are some of the traditions your family has?
Thanksgiving is HUGE in our family. We start the morning out with the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Then while I start the meal, hubs gets the Christmas tree out and starts to put it together.
When we have Jimmy's girls for Thanksgiving, it's Rain's job to stuff the turkey.
Yeah, her dad thought it was pretty darn funny...mainly because he won't touch raw meat.
Ani bastes the turkey
Anii & Dez help Daddy put the tree together
Another tradition is that we have a football/pumpkin party every year with some of our closest friends.
She swears it tastes just like chicken! Ewwwww
Then there is the same crew for a Christmas party that may or may not involve messy cookie decorating and ornament making....depends on the host!
While I'm on the topic of Christmas, we have the Christmas tree cinnamon rolls. This was a tradition I grew up with and I love carrying it on for our kids.
And a tradition that Jimmy & I started with the kids...Jesus' birthday cake!
The reason traditions came to mind is that I'm going to start a new one with my baby girl tonight. A brilliant (I think!) idea that I, of course, got from Pinterest.
I picked up this adorable notebook at my favorite store today and wrote a short letter to Ani in here. I've slid it under her pillow & when she gets home from Youth Group tonight, I'll let her in on the secret. We can take turns writing to one another and hiding it under our pillows. I think it will be a great way to keep our relationship as close as it is now and it will be a great memory for her to have when my time comes. She can share the idea with her daughters if she is so blessed to have them.
