Just Simply Jen

Thanksgiving is usually a holiday I look at and wonder what horrible thing is going to happen or what illness am I going to have. For me, Thanksgiving generally involves some level of misery. Here's a recap:
1999: I was pregnant and was so sick I could hardly stand it.
2000: I was pregnant again and a week away from my son being born. I had high blood pressure so I wasn't allowed to eat very much, not that I could have anyway. I ended up sleeping the day away.
2001: I had a bad cold but otherwise it was a decent day.
2002: I had the flu.
2003: I had some raging infection that gave me a fever of 103.7. I refused to go to the doctor and ended up in the emergency room a week later with pneumonia.
2004: I ended up having a flare up of female problems and spent the afternoon trying not to black out on my mother in law's couch.
2005: My husband was leaving for Iraq in a week and I had just gotten over a breast cancer scare. At the time I had an open wound where the biopsy site had gotten infected and spent the afternoon in acute care to get the dressing changed.
2006: I spent the day with my sister and her boyfriend and his incredibly racist,bigoted dad being treated like I had the plague or something because I didn't share his views. I was also kind of bummed because it was my first Thanksgiving without my husband and my son was really feeling it. The highlight of the day was that we got to go swimming. That was a lot of fun.
2007: Ok this one wasn't horrible but it wasn't great. My sister had chosen to have thanksgiving with her friends and that hurt a little but I was really happy that my husband was home. We didn't do anything. I cooked a little something and everything came out badly so I wasn't thrilled. I was healthy so that was a plus.

So you can see why I am apprehensive about Thanksgiving. My husband ended up having to work all morning but I still was ok. I had just planned on cooking a whole turkey breast and they don't take nearly as long so it was fine. Thankfully it turned out to be the best Thanksgiving I have had in a long time and some memories were made that will last a life time.
My son was so excited about Thanksgiving this year. In our house, Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful for all the blessings we have had over the past year. He loved that and even wrote a song about it. Originally I was planning to make a gumbo but then he got it in his head that he had to have all of the thanksgiving food. Somehow I ended up being tricked into turkey, stuffing, potatoes, green beans, gravy, and pumpkin pie. Now I'm not a pumpkin pie fan but my son really wanted to try one so we just got a small one for him to try. The big selling point on making the meal was that he was so excited. It made it easy to get into the spirit. He even said he'd try everything which is a major big deal.
As expected he woke up hyper and excited. I cooked the pie and cornbread for my stuffing while we watched the parade. He kept running back and forth between the parade and the cartoons he had on in his bedroom. It reminded me of when I was a kid and did the same thing. He spoke to most of my family as we made our morning calls and excitedly told them all about how great his thanksgiving was going to be. My husband came home and we started the turkey. My son and husband peeled and cut potatoes for the mashed potatoes and I finished putting the stuffing together (I had stuffed my turkey with onion and carrots) and got the veggies done. Before we knew it dinner was on the table and it looked awesome. I have to say the turkey was pretty good and the stuffing was AMAZING! We stuffed ourselves and then just vegged out for the rest of the day. We had so much fun. For the record, my son loved everything with the exception of the Pumpkin Pie. I can't say that I blame him and my husband said this one had a weird texture so that makes it even more understandable that he didn't like it. The cute moments were watching my son have fun helping us make some of the food and listening to him talk about all the different great things that excited him. It was really great.
This morning has continued the wonderful memories. We woke to a mix of snow and rain which was cool since we aren't used to snow any more. My son voluntarily swept and mopped the kitchen. As I type this, my son is cleaning up some of the toys he has in the living room and my husband is putting our Christmas tree together. For the record this is the first day after thanksgiving since we've been together that he hasn't had to work. I plan on having a wonderful lunch of leftovers and we will decorate the tree then watch kung fu panda. Tomorrow we are going to drag out the rest of the decorations and watch Ironman. Sunday is the little guys birthday so we will do whatever he wants with the exception of church in the morning. I'm really loving this weekend.