Thanksgiving Weekend

Thanksgiving was a long time ago, but I need to tell you how blissful that weekend was for us.

First, we canceled plans to get together with friends from Boston in Niagara Falls for the weekend. That was a hard and sad choice, but it was better for everyone's bank accounts. Instead, we invited a few families over for a good old fashioned turkey dinner at the last minute.

We were graced with the presence of these tiny people (and their parents).

Isn't this a colorful, tasty looking plate? I had to take a picture to show my mom how fancy I can be (one day a year). I finally have a good dish set, place mats, and even second-hand chargers! They're purple and shiny and they make me feel...well, fancy.

We may have started a Thanksgiving Rock Band tradition here. Great way to burn off those calories after dinner.

This year we made a thankful tree. All month we wrote things we're thankful for on leaves and stuck them on our tree. Josh had some good ones. Most of the time I think he was just saying things he knew I wanted to hear, like "Scriptures!" and "The Holy Ghost!" But he made sure to get chicken nuggets on there too.

After a lot of clean up, we spent the next day on a Christmas high. I woke up with the boys and immediately turned on Christmas music and built some graham cracker houses for them to decorate (with leftover Halloween candy, I might add). It was a really sweet morning.

The next day was Saturday and we went out to choose a Christmas tree. Then we spent the rest of the day relaxing, putting up nativities, and decorating the tree. These ones spent a lot of time with the Legos, as usual.

On Sunday I had another busy day at church. Matt put Jude and me down for naps that afternoon while he played in the fresh snow with Josh. Here's their awesome snow dragon.

You should buy this kit for your kids this winter. They will love it!

The rest of the night included outright laziness and playtime with our precious, silly boys. We even made a Christmas countdown chain. It was exactly what our little family needed to catch up with each other and take a break from some hard days full of work work work. 

Every weekend should be four days long. I might write a letter to President Obama. Maybe since we used to be neighbors he'll do me a solid and just change the American workweek forever. Good idea, yes?

Something New: Weeks 48 and 49

November 25 -- Used Josh's dragon snowman kit. Grandma Cheri sent it to us last year and we didn't get a chance to use it with so little snow. Cutest snow animal ever!

November 26 -- Tried to create a Christmas medley on the piano. My mom wants me to play in church when I go home and it's been a long while since I performed. I still get stage fright.

Novmeber 27 -- Made some delicious Mexican mole for dinner with the missionaries. It's Matt's recipe, but I did it by myself this time.

November 28 -- Bought a Weebles Wobble toy on Craigslist for Jude for Christmas. I'd never played with Weebles before, even though I knew their song. The boys are now obsessed!

November 29 -- Saw Breaking Dawn Part 2 with some friends. It was the first Twilight movie I actually really liked! And I think Matt will even like it too! Sad that they finally got it right, and now the movies are over.

November 30 -- Received some new clothes in the mail that I ordered from Hurley. Love Cyber Monday sales!

December 1 -- Tried making an Olive Garden type Zupa Toscana. It was seriously delicious. I only regret not making bread sticks! (If you want to try it, I left out the bacon drippings and the whipping cream, and it was still amazing. Matt ate almost the whole pot himself.)

December 2 -- I would tell you a really exciting thing about today, but it would ruin somebody's Christmas present, so I won't. Something sort of boring I did for the first time today was fill out a weekly TV diary for a mail-in survey. They paid us $30 to do it. Easy money.

December 3 -- Went to help clean up our church's enormous nativity exhibit. They had 1800 people come through this year in only three days! Also, I tried tortilla lime crusted tilapia, and I actually really liked it. Look at me, eating slimy fish like a grown up!

December 4 -- Finally completed Youth Protection Training online with my husband so we can be more familiar with Scouts for our church service.

December 5 -- Made a cranberry chocolate fudge cake with all the leftover cranberry sauce from Thanksgiving. I don't usually like fruit mixed with chocolate, but this was reeeeally good.

December 6 -- Looked through some new Bible study books to help my group decide which study we'll do next. We're going to read a book called Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World. I think it's just what I need right now.

December 7 -- Made something cute and special with Josh that I won't mention because, again, it will ruin another Christmas present for one of the five people who actually read my blog.

December 8 -- Learned about Advent from a friend who used to be Lutheran. They have a kind of  cool tradition with their wreath of candles. I also ordered some new glasses because we have too much money left in our flex spending health account, and we have to use it or lose it by March! Too bad I can't get my wisdom teeth out again...

Matt left me for a Chinese girl

I've been having weird dreams. Not the fun silly kind, but the kind that make you wake up crying. The kind that make you feel relieved to realize you're awake, but still leave you feeling shaken and slightly terrified of life.

I've had dreams about getting into car crashes with children in the back seat. I've had dreams about my kids going missing, or my friend's kids going missing while they were in my care. I've had dreams about men trying to steal me away from my husband, and I don't even remember that I'm married and a mother until after we've run off together, willingly. Absolutely awful.

The dream that really messed with me, though, happened a couple of months ago. After the dream, I woke up with the kids like normal, kissed Matt goodbye, and then privately burst into tears in the bathroom. That doesn't happen much around here.

But when you're mourning the hypothetical loss of your husband to a Chinese girl, you can't help it.

Basically, Matt left me. He simply found a woman he loved more, who happened to be Chinese. (It's okay to laugh here. Imagine Matt next to a tiny little Chinese girl, and you'll wonder why I took this dream seriously.)

See the resemblance?

The worst part:  he wasn't even mean to me. I couldn't even hate him for it because he still spoke to me civilly. Every sentence was just matter-of-fact, completely apathetic. I was there in the dream absolutely throwing myself at him, begging through tears for an explanation...and he would just look at me, smile, and keep talking as if he was having lunch with a coworker.

That is not my Matt. That should have been my clue that I was dreaming. Because Matt has too much love, and hate, and stubbornness, and absurdity inside him to be any kind of apathetic.

So...

I have gathered some information that's sure to help me next time I'm stuck in a dream and not sure what/who is actual reality.

If this were a different world, I sometimes might suspect that Matt was being impersonated by an alien. Or a mysteriously tall Tom Cruise with a Mission Impossible face skin mask. Or someone under the influence of Polyjuice Potion. If I had such suspicions, or if he worried the same thing about me, here's what I would ask/tell him to ensure identities.

***I hereby impart to you all of Matt's secrets!***

Top 3 TV crushes of Matt's adolescence:

#1) Winnie from the Wonder Years

#2) Topanga from Boy Meets World

...I know...Who didn't have a crush on these babes?...But wait...

#3) AUNT ZELDA from SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH

The one with the cat. Maybe that's what Matt sees in me...a potentially hot cat lady.

He secretly used to cover his zits with a little of my makeup before work. I'd find it in a weird place on the bathroom counter, and that's how I caught him. (Because Matt physically cannot put anything back where it goes, ever. It's literally a disorder.)

He dropped all the fondant for my sister's wedding cake on the kitchen floor, and then used it on the cake anyway.

He once got pee all over his pants trying to "no-hands" it at a rest stop. This was on a high school field trip. He had to get back on the school bus holding his sweatshirt over his pants, and then insisted on keeping the windows open for the long, cold ride home so no one would smell the urine.

He is an obsessive formatter. If he's making a document or PowerPoint presentation, he will spend most of his time making sure everything is lined up just right and looks symmetrical. It's another disorder.

He has an irrationally intense dislike for the following:

- Spaghetti

- Rachael Ray and Giada De Laurentiis

- Pants that have to be zipped or buttoned

- Cold tile

- German pancakes

- Fergie

- Mispronunciation of the name of his hometown, Tem-PEEEEEEE

- Mispronunciation of the word "crepe"

- Younger siblings pointing out that they are taller than him

- The teeny tiny recycling bin under our kitchen sink

- "Shake It Up" on Disney Channel (If this comes on the TV even accidentally, he cringes and starts shouting like he's trying to protect our children from a rush of F-bombs.)

Matt will develop an eye twitch just from this picture.

Things Matt does that could be considered creepy:

- sleep walks/talks/screams/runs (ask me about finding this out on our honeymoon)

- periodically looks through my phone to read all my recent texts, "not" like a paranoid psycho jealous lover

- closes his eyes, takes MY finger, and jams it into his eye socket until I'm pretty much scratching his brain

- produces the grossest, nerdiest, strangest faces I've ever seen. This is includes flipping his eyelids inside out, and squishing any kind of food through his teeth. I'll spare you from pictures.

So Matt (if that's your real name), the next time you try to leave me for a Chinese girl, I'll be ready.