Turkey Day!!!

Turkey Day!

I wrote this post on Thanksgiving Day. I am posting on Saturday the 26th. We are celebrating Thanksgiving today though we are thankful everyday for the blessings that the Lord has provided for us.

Last night Clark ate his weight in breast milk. Okay, so not really. He did however eat 280ml of breast milk from 10 until 230 am. His last feeding he ate 130ml in one sitting. He then proceeded to sleep for over five hours. Talk about a food coma… He clearly knows how to start Turkey Day out right!

Speaking of starting Turkey Day out right, one of the long standing traditions in my life is having something go absolutely WRONG on Thanksgiving. It has happened almost every year for as long as I can remember and I am not at ease about the day until it does happen. Here are a few examples of Thanksgiving Day disasters in the past:

1995, Age 14: To me Thanksgiving dinner is not dinner unless
there are sweet potatoes, this year it is my mother’s job to make them to take
to my Grandmother’s house. She fails at time management and doesn’t make them… I refuse to leave our house and go to my grandmother’s because IT IS NOT DINNER WITHOUT SWEET POTATOES!!! (Drama Queen Much???)

My mother left me at home. I called my father in Virginia so that he could talk me through making the things myself. Then I called my mom and told her she could come get me and the sweet potatoes… Life was better.

1999, Age 18: My first year out of the house and my two roommates and I are throwing a huge Thanksgiving for our friends that don’t have family close by (we lived near a military post and there were lots of single soldiers that wanted a good meal). One of my roommates, her boyfriend, and I did all of the cooking except for the bird, that was the third roommates job. So this 3rd roommate would casually come into the kitchen every now and again and check the bird then she would go sit on her but and watch the parade and generally screw off, whilst the rest of us toiled over the stove and in ovens near and far. I am in charge of broccoli casserole, stuffed
mushrooms, mashed potatoes, and SWEET POTATOES…

This year I decide that I am going to make two different batches, the first out of canned yams (the only way I’ve done it since 14) and homemade by boiling sweet potatoes and mashing them, etc. I make them, they are BEAUTIFUL! We set all of the food up in the kitchen because it is getting close to go time, then enters roommate #3… She scurries in, pushes everyone out of the kitchen, and pulls the bird out of the oven. She has not made room to put the bird on the counter beforehand and proceeds to use the pan to shove things aside to make room… A casserole dish hits the floor… I hear roommate #2’s boyfriend say, “Oh Shit! J is going to be mad.”
That’s me, J. “Um, what the hell happened?” Boyfriend: “The sweet potatoes went
down.” The next few minutes are a blur… I am pretty sure I blacked
out from anger and frustration.

Were they the homemade ones? The canned yams? What is going on? Really, you lazy wench? You just shove things out of the way? What the EFF?????

Luckily, they were the canned yams, and the homemade sweet potatoes turned out fabulous. Roommate #3 made it out alive and all was well in the world again.

2000, Age 19: My boyfriend and I live together and we decide to have a small Thanksgiving with just one other couple. We do all of the cooking, they come over for dinner and we are enjoying a few drinks. We set the food out on the microwave
stand and move it closer to the dinner table for easy access. Just before we serve ourselves the cat walks over, jumps up on the microwave stand and directly into the SWEET POTATOES!!! Marshmallows get stuck to her paws, she is running around flapping her paws while simultaneously trying to run for her life because I’m quite sure that I’ve got the butcher knife out swearing to mutilate her tail… I calm down, we clean the cat, and assess whether or not the sweet potatoes are recoverable. They aren’t, we eat the rest of the meal laughing about the misfortune.

2003, Age 22: Basic Training… That should be enough said, right? Wrong! Not only am I in basic training away from my entire family, no I am in the infirmary with the worst case of the flu I’ve ever had. Fever, vomit, sweats, etc. It is awful! I
can’t keep down fluids much less food. Doesn’t look like sweet potatoes are in
my immediate future. Then to top it all off, (TMI WARNING!!! Only proceed if you are twisted like me) the Doc prescribes me a suppository to combat the nausea.
Well that would be all good and well, but come to find out… I am allergic to this thing. So now I’ve got a jelly bullet up my ass that is making it burn to high heaven and I cannot get it out! I’m sitting on the toilet praying to GOD to give me the shits, make me pass out, anything just get this thing out!!!! Needless to say, I got it out! I won’t go into details…

There are many more thanksgiving day “bloopers” in our family history but I will save those for another time…

However, the one true and solid turkey day tradition that will last a lifetime is the tossing of sweet potatoes on the floor. We now take a single spoon full
of sweet potatoes as soon as they come out of the oven and drop it on the floor. This is our way of taking the mess into our own hands. It may not keep us from gaining new and interesting stories to add to our collection of Thanksgiving Day blunders, because realistically speaking any holiday that includes lots of food and drink, extended family, friends and fun will ultimately have a snafu or funny tale to go along with it, and for that I am Thankful!!

But most of all, I am thankful for my little family, I have the best husband anyone could ever hope for, we are blessed to have the sweetest little boy to love and cherish, we’ve got our second son Buddy that loves us unconditionally, and we have our health. I am thankful for an all knowing and caring GOD that has carried us through the past week and given us hope and courage when we were truly in the dark about our little boy’s health. I am thankful for the friends and family that
surrounded us with love and prayers when we needed it most. I am truly thankful!!

Hopefully today will be our last full day and night in the hospital and they will give us early release for good behavior tomorrow. Then we can celebrate our Thanksgiving on Saturday.For this year’s Thanksgiving we might not be eating the
traditional Thanksgiving dinner, but we are spending the day together as a family and that is all that matters to us!

We even brought “National Lampoons: Christmas Vacation” to watch
together as a family. Watching that movie on Thanksgiving has become one of our traditions over the past few years. It starts off the holiday season and gets us ready to decorate the Christmas tree. The Christmas decorations will come out on Sunday, the tree will go up, and hopefully we will get a few good photos of our family gathered near it this year.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!