Thanksgiving then Christmas

Less than a week until Thanksgiving. Cady made an astute observation while we were watching Charlie Brown Thanksgiving tonight. The episode was chock full of Christmas commercials and Cady announced, "Everyone is thinking about Christmas but nobody is thinking about Thanksgiving." She doesn't even know just how correct she is since her own mom has not even started planning a grocery list yet. Originally we were going to try to get home to Vegas or to Wisconsin to visit my family. It sounded great in theory but all kinds of details got in the way.  So, we are resuming our annual Thanksgiving with the Shaw's tradition (that would be Emma's family). This is our fourth or fifth Thanksgiving together so it's a pretty awesome consolation prize! I'm sad to miss yet another opportunity to see my family though. Perhaps this summer.

Cady has been very concerned about Santa. She is starting to question his powers. Does he live forever? How does he get into our house? And the most anxiety-provoking question of all. "Can he see me when I am going to the bathroom?" I am so glad that she was able to say that out loud. I remember how completely freaked out I was at that age believing that Santa, God and my deceased Grandmother could all see me when I was going to the bathroom. I never questioned it, I just spent a few years being weirded out by it.
The big prize is the tent that Santa is getting them. I can't wait until Christmas night when they will be allowed to put their blankets and pillows in there and sleep together. I also realize that I'm probably romanticizing how that is going to go but I just love the image so much that I'm blocking out the image of possible screaming, hair-pulling, tears, and an eventual separation.
Coben is getting Cady a pillow pet which will earn Coben HUGE points. Cady started talking about wanting a pillow pet when she first saw the commercial almost a year ago. And since then pretty much every child she knows has a pillow pet. She is quick to tell us who has them, who just got one, and how many they have. Emma has one. Maddie up the street has two. Pretty much every kid in her class has one. Every Wednesday is show-and-tell and every week I look in the show and tell box to retrieve Cady's show and tell choice and there are always pillow pets in there. Well, we figured a year is long enough to suffer. Us, not her. We are the ones that have been hearing about it for months!

Cady's imagination is out of control and she's been in our bed via middle of the night awakenings for over two months now. It started when her teacher read, "There's a Nightmare in my Closet" so I'm tempted to call her teacher at 3 a.m.just to spread the joy. This too shall pass, right? Coben on the other hand sleeps in his own bed all night. He comes in around 6 and dozes for another 1/2 hour to an hour. Then he wakes up and lays on top of me. He puts his nose right up against mine and whispers, "Hi mama." Every morning he does this and every morning I wake up with a melty heart. It's the best.
Jenny continues to eat herself silly and still manages to get herself locked in random small places for hours on end on a consistent basis. Fibi just keeps on smiling. And the rest of us? We are just so thankful for everything that we have and for the people in our lives and that life is good.