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- Does anyone else feel blindsided by the fact that Thanksgiving is NEXT WEEK?
Normally I’m so good at prepping in advance, knowing what’s coming up, and being fully prepared – but I am 100% not prepared for Thanksgiving this year.
In fact: I am probably going to be one of those crazy people going to the grocery store at 11pm on Wednesday night because I realized I’m missing ingredients to the dishes I’m responsible to make the next day (which reminds me, I should probably verify what I’m making for Thanksgiving dinner and go to the store ASAP). That’s just what I feel like this year! Like, Thanksgiving has just snuck up on me and I am not prepared at all. It’s a truly bizarre, weird feeling. - Maybe part of the reason I feel so out of sorts is because this week was Light Up Night in our little town. We ALWAYS go to Light Up Night – since Braelynn was a tiny baby – and we always went every single year when I was growing up. We look forward with anticipation to Light Up Night because it’s the “official” start of the holiday season!
The kids were super pumped and counting down the days – and then they got sick. (Insert me crying, here.) Derrick had a super minor cold over the weekend (it was gone in like 24 hours), but then Leander got hit with it (like a Mack truck) on Monday, and Braelynn got it on Wednesday. They’ve been down ever since.
So, obviously, we did not make it down to the parade.
That’s probably the number one thing no one ever told me/warned me/prepared me for in being a parent: that there will be events that only happen once a year that your kid will spontaneously get sick right before and cause you not to be able to take part. Not because you’re sick (as the parent), but because your kid is sick. And thus, you have to stay home.
And it’s not just the random little things that you miss out on that come around again in a week or a month – it’s the BIG things that only happen once a year that kill me. Like, Light Up Night only happens once a year, and we missed it. I have photos of my kids at Light Up Night for the last 7 years, and we missed it this year.
This isn’t the first time this has happened either – we’ve missed Thanksgiving dinners, Easter egg hunts, and special birthdays. And each time, I’ve done my best to still make things magical at home – cooking our own Thanksgiving dinner and eating by candlelight, creating our own Easter egg hunt – but it’s not the same.
And it breaks my heart.
And it doesn’t just break my heart because we missed out on the fun – but because next year when Light Up Night rolls around again, my kids will be 8 and 4 (super close to 9 and 5!) and they’ll be different. They’ll experience the parade differently – it will still be magical, but it’ll just be different, and that is what makes me want to just sit down and cry. - So, needless to say, we haven’t done much of anything this week.
We did blow up all of the balloons and “lightly” decorate for Leander’s birthday (which is coming up so fast – time is just a monster!) We still have some things we’ll hang and put up right before his party, but we officially started to make progress. - OH – so let’s talk about this week’s Abby’s Saturday photo!
This is actually a re-creation of a photo I took wayyyy back in 2017 (go back and see it here!)
As I was setting up to take this photo, I realized that I was going to be able to see the boxes that currently live in our dining room on each edge of the photo. Those boxes hold our new flooring – it will be laid in our kitchen, dining room, and (someday) new bathroom. We bought it when we were buying flooring for our new entryway because it was heavily discounted – the only “problem” is, now we have to store it. And we truly don’t have a good place that we can store stuff like that – our basement gets wet when it rains, our garage also leaks (and needs some major repairs). So, the boxes are living in our dining room for now (and the foreseeable future). I tried to crop them out, but it cut into the photo too much – I tried to photoshop them away, but ultimately decided to simply leave them there as a “bookmark” for where we are in our lives right now. - I did some minor updating to my website this week! It started out as just swapping out one photo, and then I swapped out another, adjusted how one section looked, then re-wrote a paragraph over here, and before you knew it, I was going through and doing a little overhaul. I love the new look – it feels lighter and fresher and better.
- We’re supposed to go to Kennywood today for an “influencer” event that they’re hosting on their opening weekend of Holiday Lights (another event that we’ve been counting down the days to and anxiously awaiting). Thankfully, the kids seem to be on the mend, so I think we’re going to try to go – fingers crossed!
