11.23.17 - Thanksgiving Day

We traveled all day yesterday from Sacramento to Denver airport to Colorado Springs to Dad's ranch about another 45 minutes away. I'm sure it was overwhelming for both the girls, but especially clara who (1) is old enough to be more anxious about all the unfamiliarity and (2) had barely slept at all. She did pass out near the end of the flight on Jack, but she woke up not 20 minutes later as we were trying to put all out stuff together to deplane, and then she didn't sleep the whole drive to COS, surprisingly. (Side note: Jack was so sweet on the plane trying to hold Clara still so she could sleep while still gathering our belongings with his feet and whatever.)

Anyway, Clara also fell asleep at the very end of our drive to the ranch. (We got there at like 10 p.m.) Jack took her upstairs and put her in the master bedroom but she woke up, and then he had to take her ponytails out and she was very fussy. I felt bad for her, but once Jack brought our bags up, I remembered we had packed her very favorite Maurader's Map blanket and her teddy bear (Bobo). I got the blanket out and gave it to her and she smiled and smushed her whole face into it. Then I got Bobo out and gave him to her and she gave him a big hug, and held on to both him and her blanket, and kept saying "It's Bobo!" and "It's a blanket!" It was so sweet.

We didn't even try to get her to sleep in a bed separate from us. The master bed is king size anyway, so it isn't really difficult to have sleep between us. I ended up sleeping on a matress on the floor most of the night with Jane (easier to nurse her that way without worrying about Clara kicking her or rolling on her or something).

Clara woke up at about 7:30am (which really isn't that bad - over 7 hours of almost continuous sleep is pretty good for me these days). She was fussy and teary eyed, I suspect because she didn't know where she was. But I cuddled her for a long while and she calmed down. Then she layed on her tummy next to me while I checked a few things online and absentmindedly rubbed her back. At one point I stopped rubbing her back to type something and she sat up, grabbed my hand, put it back on her back, and layed back down.

I softly sang "If I Only Had a Brain" to her and when I switched to "If I Only Had a Heart" I had Bobo sing it to her, which made her smile a lot. She eventually took him from me and snuggled him. It was a nice 15-20 minutes of quiet cuddle time with her while Jack and Jane slept.

Even after Jack and Jane woke up, we all hung out in the master bedroom for probably 45 minutes or so just taking our time. Jack built another fire in the wood burning stove and we kept that going for a while. Between that and the electric blanket it was cozy enough, although without those it would have been too cold. Clara had a smoothie and I skimmed FB to see what everyone else was doing to prep for the holiday. It was a pretty relaxing morning.

Eventually we got up and started getting ready to go. It took quite a while, but we left by 10:45 am, which isn't too bad. Henry went with us, and Neil and Emily stayed at the ranch to cook their vegan dishes.

Shortly after we got to Dad's, Dave called via FB (facetime? I think?) and Clara, Jane, and I got to see the Jackson clan at their Thanksgiving. In particular Clara and Naomi got to stare at each other through the phone for a bit. They both said hi a few times. Naomi was impressed with what she thought was a cupcake (actually an acorn) on Jane's onesie. It was nice to briefly see everyone.

It was weirdly calm and relaxed at Dad's. Normally on Thanksgiving it feels like a lot of bustling about trying to get everything ready in time, but Dad and Jill had prepped a lot of their food in advance, and Ellen, Everett, Henry, and my family had all gotten there so early we had hours to get ready. Ellen and Everett prepped green bean casserole and cheesy potatoes while I boiled sweet potatoes Jack, Henry, and Everett all took turns keeping an eye on Clara, and Jane got passed from person to person pretty regularly (and cheerfully). It's a lot easier getting cooking or anything else done with children around when there are so many adults to help look after the kids. It was nice to sip some wine while prepping food too.

After a while, Jill's younger brother Stuart and his family arrived. Jill had been particularly looking forward to this and had told me multiple times what a sweet guy Stuart is, and she was right. He was very friendly and joking around a lot. He was very easy to talk to. His son, Wilder, is about 6 months younger than Clara, so that gave his wife, Alexis, and me common ground to talk about, which was nice. I appreciate how often being a parent has made conversations with new people easier.

Stuart and Jill made a pretty delicious bowl of sangria, too. We had quite a bit of that.

It did start to be a bit of a rush at the end. Dad got into host/solution mode especially regarding the many dishes we needed to bake in only two ovens. He pulled it off well. By the time we were ready to eat we had covered the kitchen island, computer counter, coffee maker counter, and fully extended baker station with food, including sweet potato casserole (one vegan, one gluten free), cheesy potatoes, green bean casserole, rolls, the turkey, stuffing, vegan eggplant parmesan, vegan Swedish meatballs, vegan mac'n'cheese, cranberry salad, sangria, wine, beer, and of course a whole bunch of different pies...

 including the caramel rose applie pie from this video:

The feast was wonderful. Jane sat in my lap. The last week or so she's shown a lot more attention to my food, so today I decided to let her try the tiniest bit of sweet potato casserole. She seemed really taken aback, but I assume by the texture because sweet potato casserole is delicious. I didn't give her any more at that point. We'll start her properly with rice cereal when we get home. I had made one of the casseroles gluten free and tried to get Clara to try it but she wasn't having it. Amazingly picky eater, that girl, but it kind of works out in our favor.

After everyone digested (and cleaned up) a bit, a whole bunch of us played The Paper Game. I think there were 10 people playing, which is more than enough to only go around once, which is a nice change of pace. Also Sola had this big set of multicolored gel pens for everyone to use, which makes it easy to track who drew or wrote what since everyone has a different color. Neil's drawings are always some of my favorites but I gotta say Sola always impresses me with the Paper Game. She's a lot younger than everyone else playing but keeps up with the humor, both laughing and making others laugh. It's awesome.

Once The Paper Game was done (which gave us more time to digest) we busted out the pies. The caramel apple rose pie was delicious. So sweet. I think that's actually the only kind I ate, although yesterday I did try a slice of chocolate pie with homemade whipped cream. Jill also made a flourless chocolate cake and earlier I ate some of the leftover icing to that, also fantastic. So many wonderful foods.

We went back to the ranch house and this time we put the heater on, which is much more efficient and consistent then the fires. We still made fires in the living room and the wood burning oven of the master bedroom, and they were cozy too.