Listen. I know that Thanksgiving has long come and gone, buried in the chaos and excitement of the Christmas season. But we had a really good break and I wanted to write about it, at least to remind myself of it!
This semester at school has been a tough one! There has been a number of reasons for this, but overall it has been an intense time of teaching, for our family, and for our school community as a whole. We were only going to have Weds-Fri off of school, but the week before that they decided to also give us Mon-Tues off. I AM SO THANKFUL. I knew I was getting close to burnout but also knew I had no choice but keep going.
We managed to do a lot over the 10 days of break and it was such a good mix of being busy while also relaxing.
We finished school on Thursday and came home and crashed HARD. The next morning was a Friday (our school doesn’t have school on Fridays). It was also Ezra’s birthday. And we all woke up sick, including my parents. Just a head cold, but this always happens to us when we have been going so hard with no possibility of stopping. The second we stop, our bodies just completely shut down. Anyways, on top of all that, Theo had to go to court alllll day, even though it was his day off. We had a serious case of the grumpies and everyone felt sick and Theo was gone and my parents were also not feeling well and I was afraid our whole break was going to turn out like this.
I laid down on the floor and said “I just want to rest and nobody to touch me”. So all my kids piled on me. Because, of course.
We did celebrate Ezra’s 3rd birthday that evening, and even though my parents weren’t feeling good, we were 99% positive that we all had the same germs and they came over to celebrate with Ezra. Ezra is so happy and delightful and he didn’t even realize that that mood was far grumpier than it should have been for a birthday party! He LOVED every second of it.
Thankfully, by Saturday we were all on the upswing and we spent the day just laying low at home and doing nothing.
Sunday was a busy and FULL day. We headed off to church, then went to lunch with some out of town relatives who happened to be passing through on their trip to their holiday destination. These are relatives I haven’t seen in a long time but who used to live locally and we would hang out frequently. It was so great to see them again!
We left straight from lunch to head to Hocking Hills to meet up with some of Theo’s co-workers for a little cabin and hiking get together. It was a blast and it was fun to get to know some other people! It was COLD so we were mostly in the cabin, but went out for a hike each day- Old Man’s Cave and Ash Cave.
I apparently took zero pictures at the cabin except for this one with the intense game of Monopoly, but we ended up doing a lot of sitting around chatting, we did a puzzle, played some games and spent some time reading books or on our phones.
By day 2, our kids were really heading into meltdown territory and we decided to call it on the trip and head back home a day early. We drove the two hours home and walked into a very cold house. I kept wondering why the heat wasn’t kicking on and that was when we realized the furnace wasn’t working at all, and the head would not be turning on until we got it fixed. This was Tuesday afternoon and we knew with the Thanksgiving holiday coming up on Thursday, it might be a challenge to get it fixed before then! We called a furnace repair man who promised he would try to get to us as soon as possible the next day. We just bundled up, tried to all stay in the same room and keep a space heater in that room, and went over to my parents house to thaw out when needed. I guess it really is true- you never know what you got until it’s gone! And heat is certainly one of those things that I am very aware that we have- but I am not as aware as when it’s gone!
Thankfully, we were only without heat for a little over 24 hours and the furnace repair man was able to get it up and running again. He said it doesn’t look great and what we need to do is replace the whole thing. He also said he would be very surprised if it lasts us all winter. So here’s to hoping that that baby can get us through until March or April! We just bundled up, sat in the sunshine, drank warm drinks, and snuggled with anything fluffy and warm.
I also took the chance this break to take my Mom to some of our local thrift stores! We barely scratched the surface of the thrift stores around here and for sure didn’t get to see everything that we wanted to see! But we had success!!
Thankfully our heat was fixed in time to host Thanksgiving at our house! We had our family, my parents, and a couple from school. My Mom and I cooked all morning at both of our houses and then we got together to eat around 3pm. I didn’t take a single picture!!! We ate all the traditional Thanksgiving foods, played a few rounds of Uno, and then had some dessert.
All of the people left our house around 6pm, and we were so disoriented! It felt like we had just finished dinner and therefore should be heading to bed, but 6pm was way too early for bed! We ended up literally crawling into bed around 6:30 and all watching a movie together before we really went to sleep.
The next day (Friday), Theo was up early and headed back to work and Ezra came down with a fever. He was pretty sick for three straight days with just a fever, but honestly, it was exactly what we needed. I didn’t feel comfortable leaving the house, Ezra just needed to rest on the couch, and the two big kids mostly just played all day. I sat on the couch with Ezra and read my book and did puzzles.
We also had a chance to visit our favorite police officer as he had to work a looonnnng 7 day in a row (10 hour shifts each day). And, yes, he does carry A LOT on his duty belt. With his vest + duty belt combined, he carries 30+ pounds.
Ezra’s fever broke but he was still pretty grumpy and not back to his normal energy, so I kept him home from church on Sunday and my parents took the two older kids to church with them (Theo was working). Then that evening (Theo was still working ha) I left Ezra with my Dad and my Mom and I took the two big kids to our church advent wreath building service. We built the advent wreath and then lit the first candle, read the Scripture and sang a few hymns. It was a beautiful service, and a great way to end our Thanksgiving break!
And that was a wrap! I was able to go back to school this week feeling so much more refreshed!
And now it is the literal spring to the finish line of our first semester at school!