A cough, Frozen 2, Thanksgiving

On Tuesday this week I was asked to guest teach in the morning. I hated cancelling on my volunteering (again) but I need the Christmas money, so I took it. Afterwards I went to visit Jessica(the mom with breast cancer). She is having a hard time with things. She's worried about losing her hair, struggling with having to cut back at work and just feeling generally down. I have never had a friend with cancer and I struggle with knowing what to say. I can't imagine how hard it would be to think life is going one way and then totally be thrown this curve ball.

Unfortunately my visit to Jessica was cut short by a phone call from the school- Lucy's cough that she has had for weeks had escalated. I felt bad leaving early and hoped I hadn't shared germs with her. I also felt bad about sending Lucy to school when I knew she was coughing a ton. I just felt like one big mom fail. To compound that mom fail feeling, I had already bought tickets to see "Frozen 2" with the girls that night and I didn't want to cancel so I took them anyways. Lucy ended up coughing through the entire movie. I felt terrible. The movie itself was alright. There were some scary parts and Olaf definitely made for a good comic relief. The best part was when Olaf acted out a summary for the first Frozen movie.

Wednesday Penny didn't have school and I decided to stop mom failing and kept Lucy home. I was going to have a special Penny day and take her to the mall to get pretzels and play but with the awful coughing that did not happen. Instead the girls had fun playing together and had a sister day instead.

Thursday was Thanksgiving and it was not stressful which was real nice. Caroline took over the turkey and some sides. Corinne took over the rolls and pie. And all I had was the mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes and mac n cheese. I slept in, had a lazy morning, did a little online shopping, made my sides and then everyone came over and it was feast time. It was real good food and a real good time afterwards- chatting, finishing up a puzzle I had started, Tyler and another husband playing the ukulele, my friends singing along....It was real fun. Afterwards everyone left but my friend Caroline- together we hit up Meijers and Target to get some puzzles that were on sale for Black Friday. Target was a little crowded but the lines were not bad at either store.

After Thanksgiving I had promised the kids we would put up Christmas decorations so most of that day was spent decorating. It was a lot trickier figuring where to put the trees since I rearranged the house and it was made even more trickier by children that kept hounding me to get them up already so they could decorate them. But places were found and trees are up and decorated.

We did take a break from decorating in the afternoon and went to Chuck-E-Cheese. We still had a little left on the giftcard Tyler's parent's had given us for last Christmas so we figured we would use it up and get the kids out of the house for a bit. It was a good choice. The kids enjoyed all the silly little games and getting tickets for cheap-o prizes.

As you can see, Penny is wearing her fake glasses and has been ever since. When I asked her, "How long have you been blind?" She responded with, "A hundred thousand years."