Andelin Adventures – Page 65 – A blog about Kyle and Rebecca's family

Thanksgiving

My sister Debby, was going to host Thanksgiving this year, since she and her husband bought their first condo and finally have a place to call their own. But when Rexton was born early (he was due in December), Debby started doubting if she could handle hosting this year and asked if we could just host it instead.

I started with making the pies last night so that they would be done and wouldn’t have to fight for oven space and time today. While I was working on another pie crust the cat jumped on the table and started eating one of my prepped pie crusts!

I flipped out because I didn’t want to have to roll another piece of pastry to reline the pie pan. Instead, Kyle suggested that I just cut out the part that the cat touched and just put a patch of fresh pastry on. So that is what I did.

This morning, I got started with the stuffing, and the turkey. The turkey was still frozen even though it has been in the fridge for the last few days. But I got it thawed out enough to remove the innards and I got it stuffed and in the oven, and went on working on the other items on the menu.

Meanwhile, Kyle was helping by getting all of the laundry, that I have been neglecting, downstairs. Check out his idea of “taking laundry downstairs”:

Basically he stood at the top of the stairs and he and the kids just threw piles of laundry down. At least they had fun….I guess.

Mom & Dad were in town, but they spent the morning at Debby’s place getting the baby’s room all cleaned up and setting up a crib that they brought for Rexton. They came over in the afternoon, and said that Debby and Jeff weren’t home when they left, so they would be over later.

The turkey came out beautiful, just like it always does. It was so beautiful, Kyle wanted to kiss it!

When Debby and Jeff arrived, they brought with them this beautiful fruit platter. I saw the idea online and when she asked what to bring I sent her a picture and said “THAT!”

Here is the whole Thanksgiving spread for this year:

Turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, baked sweet potatoes, creamy carrots and green beans. The cinnamon apple rings, spiced whole apples, spiced whole peaches, cranberry sauce, jams, Cornucopia, and rolls were all home made. Actually only the olives came from a can. 🙂

We probably could have lived without the green beans, and I wish the rolls rose a little bit more, but other than that it turned out very nice.

After we were finished with the main meal Grandpa passed out the chocolate turkeys. This is a tradition from when I was young. Every year there are always chocolate turkeys. The kids really enjoyed them.

This is Lydia saying “Turkey flying!”

Adam wasn’t sure what to do with his turkey at first.

But he figured it out. 🙂

While the kids ate their chocolate turkeys Jeff decided to take a nap, while Rexton was also napping.

We decided to go downstairs and watch a movie to give our stomachs more time to digest dinner before breaking out the pies. I made four pies total, a pumpkin, an apple, a cherry peach, and a pecan. In the past I have made way more than four pies for a Thanksgiving dinner, but by the time everyone has stuffed themselves on dinner, hardly anybody actually eats any pie, so I decided to cut it down a bit this year. 🙂

All in all it was a crazy busy day, but the food all turned out alright, and everyone liked it. And it was good to get to spend the day with family.

School Pictures

Liesl and Granny came out for a quick visit today, and while she was here she took pictures of the kids for us. Kyle had asked her to take some pictures of the kids individually and we are calling them their school pictures for this year.

Ethan is in 5th grade, and he most definitely needs a haircut!

Tyra is in 4th grade:

Jeremy is in 2nd grade:

Dinah is in kindergarten:

Chloe is in pre-k:

Lydia is too young to have an official grade, but we still let her learn with us during the day. 😉

And here is Adam:

He had just woke up from a nap and wasn’t sure what to think about having visitors.

Heartache

On Tuesday, I noticed just a little bit of pink on the toilet paper after going to the bathroom. Wednesday the pink was a darker shade and there was a bit more of it. This of course raised some concerns within me. I talked with Kyle about it and he told me not to worry about it. Of course I kept right on worrying. Thursday the pink was even darker and the quantity was still increasing. I decided to call my midwife and ask what she thought. But when she answered the phone and found out it was me, she said that she is not allowed to even talk to me. She had a bit of a law suit brought up against her recently and I guess that is the way the judge ruled. She can no longer practice as a midwife, and is not allowed to talk to her previous clients about pregnancy related stuff. At that point, I felt alone and scared. I was having issues and I needed to talk to somebody, an expert in the field, not just to Kyle. I called the gal that used to be her assistant and talked to her. The pink discharge the fact that I’m nearly 7 weeks and not feeling sick yet, led her to believe that I might be having a miscarriage. I hoped not, so I have tried to take it easy for the past couple of days. Kyle had taken the day off of work yesterday so we could move the boys bunk bed upstairs. He ended up doing most of it himself. I tried to move smaller stuff like the empty shoe boxes and small things like that that were in the way. I also held the bunk bed pieces in a standing position so Kyle could get them screwed together, but that was about it.

Last night we had movie night with the kids. We watched Turbo. As the movie went on, I was not feeling well. I was uncomfortable and starting to feel crampy. When the movie was over we prayed and the kids went upstairs to get to bed. I remained on the floor in the family room for a couple of minutes. When I stood up, I felt that gush that meant that I needed to get to the bathroom NOW. I tried to get to my bathroom as quickly as I could, but one of the kids was in there. I yelled that I needed my bathroom NOW. Kyle could tell that things were not right. Under normal circumstances I would have politely waited for the kid to finish and come out. I was most definitely suffering from a miscarriage.

When I came out of the bathroom, knowing that what I had been fearing had in fact taken place, Kyle tried to comfort me. He tried to get the kids to bed by himself because he could tell that I was not going to be able to do it, and then he just held me for a bit. He asked me if there was anything he could get for me. I knew that I would be bleeding a lot through the night and I did not want to lay down, so I asked him to clear my recliner off for me. He ended up putting a lot of that stuff on my treadmill, which I didn’t like, but I also realized that I wasn’t going to be using the treadmill anytime in the next couple of weeks anyway, so I just dealt with it. And so I sat in my recliner all night trying to get some rest.

Today, I am hiding in my room. I don’t want to move at all. And my heart is broken. I wonder why this happened. Why am I going through this? How will I get over this? What should I be doing to make sure that by body can heal from this? We were going to announce our pregnancy when we have most of the family here for Jeremy’s birthday and baptism next week. That won’t be happening any more. Instead I’ve got to try to recover a bit before all the family gets here. Our kids don’t even know that we were pregnant, and that I’ve miscarried. We don’t usually tell them about a pregnancy until we are ready for the word to get out, because once you tell little kids about it, it’s no longer a secret from anyone. They have no idea why I am hiding in my room today. When will we tell them? Will we tell them? I realized, that because I’ve miscarried, I can now take ibuprofen to ease the pain of the cramps, but that won’t help the pain that I feel in my heart.

Baby Rexton

We made some dinner to take to Debby, and so we got to meet baby Rexton tonight! He is so little! The kids really enjoyed seeing him, and Kyle and I got to hold him. Debby also asked us for advise on how to wrap him, so I showed her a cool way of making a baby burrito, that my midwife showed me after Lydia was born.

Locks of Love

My group of Girl Scout Juniors are working on earning their bronze award, which is kind of a simpler version of the gold award which they can earn when they are older, and is the Girl Scout equivalent of the Eagle Scout award for boys. The bronze is a 20 hour service project that the girls do as a troop. In a couple of years they can earn their silver awards which is a 50 hour service project done in small groups of no more than 4. Finally they can earn their gold award which is a 100 hour (or two 50 hour) service project(s) that they do on their own.

We had each of the girls submit at least one project idea, along with a basic plan of what we would need to pull it off, and in the end we didn’t select any of the plans the girls turned in. One of them had suggested that we organize free hair cuts for poor people, but that isn’t a sustainable project, because you cut the hair once and eventually it will grow and need to be cut again. Somehow as we talked about that, other ideas came up and the idea of doing a Locks of Love drive was presented. This would be more sustainable, since girls would come and have their hair cut for free, and we would send the hair to Locks of Love to be made into wigs for girls who lose their hair due to medical issues. So that is what the girls decided they wanted to do.

Being the leader, and having long hair, I of course let them cut my hair to donate:

Tyra was at the event with me and the rest of our troop, and Kyle brought the rest of our kids by to check out the bake sale and craft sale that we were also having. The girls thought that would be a nice way to provide opportunities for people who don’t have hair long enough to donate, to help Locks of Love with the cost associated with making wigs.

One of Tyra’s friends from church came to donate her hair, and that started Tyra off, begging us to let her donate her hair as well. So Kyle took the kids home and washed their hair so that they could come back and donate it. Tyra, Dinah and Chloe all donated their hair.

Lydia’s hair isn’t long enough to donate, so she is the only girl in our family that didn’t get a hair cut. Tyra, Dinah and Chloe were all so very excited to get their hair cut though. Personally I am afraid of having their hair so short. I don’t own a curling iron and if it starts flipping every which way, I’m not going to know how to fix it. This also means no more braids or pony tails for awhile and Chloe is simply adorable with her hair in a set of french braids. As for myself, my hair was long enough to begin with that I was able to donate the required 10 inches (minimum) and still be able to have long hair. Here we are with our new dos: