I think we should rename ourselves the Griswolds. That's the kind of Thanksgiving we had. I can laugh about it now, now that everything has turned out OK, but at the time, if the house would have exploded into flames, I wouldn't have been the least surprised.
There are no pictures of this holiday, therefore you won't see any in this post. You'll understand why in a moment.
The day started off at about 7:30. Jeff's mom called and said that his dad's heartburn that he'd been having for over a week had really gotten bad. They were going to take him to the hospital to make sure it was only heartburn. Well, turns out it wasn't just heartburn...he was having a heart attack. They whisk him away to have an angiogram, where they find two of his arteries pretty clogged. 90%, I think. They put in a stent in the one artery that they thought was the culprit. In a week they'll go in again and put another stent in the other bad artery. He is very lucky and we're all heaving a GIANT sigh of relief that Jack is ok and on the mend. He will be out of commission for a good month...he'll just need to take it easy. Unfortunately, that is no small task. Jeff's mom, Lenore is severally disabled and needs constant care. Jack does everything for her and with him not 100%, this poses a huge conundrum on what to do and how to handle this. Jeff is working out what to do with his parents along with his sister, Tracy. He stayed the night on Thanksgiving to care for his mom. Needless to say, the only turkey he got was a turkey meatloaf from Trader Joe's.
While all this was going on in West Hills, over here in Newhall was another kind of chaos. Zach has had a cold for a week now. The usual snotty nose, nothing crazy. Well, of course the twins are now snotty as well. So Dylan starts to ramp up a little fever. It keeps climbing all day. Poor kid had the thermometer up his little dupa more times than I can count. I kept getting different readings with all three (yes three rectal thermometers laying around!)...at the highest one said 102.7 and then 104.3. I started to panic a bit when I saw those numbers. That's when I called the pediatrician. But before I called, Zach, who had been quiet and lethargic all day, decided to puke all over the couch. And then again about 15 minutes later into the barf bowl. All of this is going on simultaneously. Oh, and I've got a huge dinner cooking in the kitchen. At one point I looked at my mom and said, "I don't think I can handle one more thing." And a few minutes later Zach barfed. At one point I just laughed...it was a bit of a shrill, bordering on insanity laugh, but a laugh all the same.
In a nutshell, the ped told me to give the Dylan Motrin (did you know CVS is open on Thanksgiving?), Zach only threw up twice and was back to his old self by 5pm, and our dinner was really freakin' good, albeit an hour later than intended. Oh, and our neighbor Ed called and cancelled about an hour before he was supposed to arrive because he had the flu. So we had A LOT of food. Planned for 9, only had 5...that's including Zach who only ate toast.
In the end, all the kids are doing much better. Fevers are gone. Throwing up has ceased. Jack is doing great.
Now you understand why there are no pictures. I had zero time to think about my camera. And, you can be thankful I didn't have any to share...they wouldn't have been pretty.
And this Thanksgiving, I am thankful that it's over.
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