Three Ways to Give Thanks

What a difference a day makes. The next morning was gorgeous and warm, with not a single cloud in the sky. Faith took advantage of the weather change and decided that all human beings should arise with the morning dawn while staying at the grandparents’ house.

Perfect weather could only mean three things…tractors, paintball and an awesome turkey dinner.

Grandpa A. has a reputation for babying his tractor. The tractor resides in the garage – not the family cars. Grandpa’s favorite hobby? Driving a tractor. The children had a wild time taking turns riding the tractor. It was enough for Grace to sit on Grandpa’s lap, (too nervous to take the wheel), while Jack was in complete driver’s heaven zig zagging with enthusiastic over corrections (he might have the Adams tractor gene).

Ken was invited to an on site paintball match with Uncle Jacob and his friend. This apparently is serious stuff folks. We discovered Uncle Jacob has a past time of his own…digging giant trenches. Ken wore a fresh pair of Grandpa A.’s Marine fatigues (which wigged Mom out a little). But what a beautiful father, son shot this is (post paint war).

Grandma did an unbelievable job of putting together a jaw dropping spread during the day: juicy perfect turkey, stuffing, waldorf salad, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, rolls, peas, apple pie and pumpkin pie. It was a tasty ending to a happy day with family.

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The Macy’s Day Parade

It was a valiant effort. Despite continued winds and rain, most of the crew headed out in the morning to witness the one and only Macy’s Day Parade. Faith had impeccable timing and decided that it would be a perfect morning to catch up on a good snooze indoors (Mom didn’t put up a fight).

Meanwhile, the men buckled down and launched children on their shoulders for a better view, Grandma fended off rude Italian ladies armed with cameras and Jacob and Rachel blew bubbles to distract any child at ground level.

The crew returned back to the hotel in wet waves. Airing out in the hotel room and electing to watch the rest of the parade in front of a TV screen. Faith slept through the entire parade. Smart girl.

And so it was…home again, home again…good bye exciting and cold New York….hello peaceful and warm Asbury, New Jersey.

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Planes, Ferries and Subways

This Thanksgiving, we hopped aboard a “New Jersey Plane” (as Jack would say) and headed out to the small quaint town of Asbury to visit Grandma and Grandpa A. But before we could enjoy quaint, the grandparents thought we’d hit something a little more grand. After an evening to recover from our flight into New Jersey, Grandpa A. and the Knucker Hatch clan headed toward the Big Apple in the mini van. The day was rainy, cold and overcast, but the children’s excitement over their adventure kept things cheerful.

The first “new” mode of transporation to experience was the Staten Island Ferry. The children went out on the deck with Dad to endure a chill wind at the front of the boat, and snap a picture.

Meanwhile, Faith (donned in her super puffy fuzzy suit) and Mom stuck to indoors, preferring to keep an eye on the simmering melting pot.

As soon as our feet hit dry ground, we were off to ride the next new form of transportation…the delightful subway. The subway ride took us a short jaunt away from Radio City Music Hall. Miss Faith, was a complete champ, but exhausted. She slept sucking wind while wrapped on my back as we all trapsed through wind and the rain the last few blocks to arrive just in time to be entreated to The Rockette Christmas Show.

Grace loved the orchestra and Jack, to some poor soul’s chagrin, couldn’t seem to remove his chin off the back rest in front of him. After a cat nap, Faith had other plans, finding it more entertaining to crawl around the corridors and flirt with security.

With all the travel and entertainment, satiating an appetite was in order. We met up with Grandma A. and Aunt Rachel and Uncle Jacob for a feast at Bubba Gumps.

And since the night was still young (for the youth at least), we visited the giant Toys ‘R Us near Times Square. Grace picked out a new “My Little Pony” and Jack landed his mits on his first GIJoe toy laser gun with about 25 different laser-y sounds. I can’t recall if that was before or after he side swiped a lady with a stroller on the escalator and proceeded to wipe out, forcing the lady to exit the escalator over the top of him with the stroller. But I digress…

That night, every single one of the Knucker Hatches was in bed by 8:30pm.

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And THAT Was June

If you have been reading the In This Corner blog you are very aware of our family’s ups and downs last month. It has been crazy. It has been fun. It has been busy. And it has been very sad at times. To borrow and modify part of a well known poem:

When it was good, it was very, very good.
But when it was bad, it was horrid.

I know, family tends to dabble only on the Knucker Hatch blog so here’s a monthly recap for you strict Knucker Hatch surfers:

In early June we hit Nags Head Beach for a full week of wonderful vacationing with Ken’s side of the family. The cousins all got along famously and ate up every last bit of Grandma and Grandpa’s attention.

Due to illness, we had to miss the second half of the trip which would have been a full week of vacationing with my Dad’s side of the family in Florida.

But the Lord was looking out for all of us, as it was clear that we needed to be home with our nine year old, very loved, but hurting Golden Retriever. After a month of many tests and vet trips, we discovered that she was dying of kidney failure. So, on the 31st of June, we had to say good bye to our one and only Maggie Lou. Thank you to all of you who have called or sent cards to check on us and our grieving…it means so very much to us. I know for others, this will be the first time you have heard.

We are taking it day by day, and it is getting easier. But there isn’t a single day that goes by in which we don’t miss her giant face licks and sweet demeanor incredibly.

I’ve put together a series of links from the In This Corner blog. It follows the swift decline of Maggie. Perhaps it will be helpful to someone out there researching the medicine Deramaxx for treating canine arthritis. If you see the following symptoms in your dog: body tremors, not eating for days, vomiting, black stools, please consider changing meds if your dog is already on Deramaxx (even if it doesn’t show up in the kidney numbers). Deramaxx was a gift to Maggie, and helped her considerably, but in hindsight, we might have picked another arthritic medicine, as the damage to her kidneys was most likely a result of the Deramaxx. The kidneys didn’t reflect the damage in the blood tests until it was much too late, but her big brown eyes told us something wasn’t right six months ago.

My Poor Eighty Pound Baby
Dog Gone Grief
Playing Us Like A Fiddle
The Dog Days of Summer
One Last Night of Friendship
Meet Me At The Door Maggie

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Goggle Boy

This has to be one of my favorite photos from the beach trip. It makes me laugh every time I see it. The prelude to this photo is that Jack was sitting in a blow up raft boat while Dad stood beside the boat holding it steady…until a large wave hit just right to launch Jack completely out of the boat and into the sand.

This is my son expressing a full range of emotions including: embarrassment, frustration, feelings of failure, exhaustion, and whatever emotions a hearty cup full of sand in the board shorts generate.

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Vacation! Vacation?

If I could sum up our vacation in two words, the title would be perfect. I’m a “glass is half full” girl, but I have been trying really hard focus on all of the wonderful good that our vacation generated. The first part of our vacation was spent with Ken’s family in an unbelievable beach house just off the coast in Nags Head, NC. We had the beach, house pool, and hot tub just outside our door. I couldn’t have asked for anything beach-ier. Mr. Alberto did drop a boat load of rain and wind in the middle of the week, but after the storm had passed the waves were perfect for boogie boarding for the next few days.

The company was excellent. The food was divine. I was deep into a good book. Faith was loving the new scenery and faces. Grace and Jack were well behaved and cheery children. All of the cousins got along so well. We had three babies under the age of 18 months in the house, and at times we joked that we were residing in a church nursery. The babies were a new joy to have around as they were but an inkling in the 2004 Beach Trip.

Where the vacation breaks down, is that a few days into the vacation a little bug started flying around. Just a fever, and a sore throat. A few cousins caught it. A couple of adults were battling a different kind of bug. I myself had spent a couple of hours in the bathroom in the middle of one night a hair away from losing all of my cookies, but I attributed it to a very spicy crab cake. As we packed up the car to head to Florida for my family’s side of the vacation, I couldn’t believe we had survived the bout with illness. Our kids had been unscathed. This I had immediately attributed to only the Grace of God. We actually have a name for a curse that appears to be on our household over the last five years…as every time we go on a vacation we get some gut wrenching illness that spreads like wildfire.

So we hopped in the car and headed to Kissimee, Florida. Deciding to divide the ride up into two days, we settled in Savannah. The curse…followed. That night, Faith came down with a 102 temperature, and congestion. She was a furnace and it was a miserable night for her. Jack reacted to the mite infested sofa bed and needed a breathing treatment in the morning. We hadn’t escaped. I had no idea what our week would have in store. It could have been just the beginning. It was also Faith’s first illness (not vaccination induced).

I felt like an absolute heel that morning. I had to tell the children, we had to double back home. No Disney World. No Sea World. No Grandpa. I had to call my father on Father’s Day, of all days, and tell him we wouldn’t be coming down for the week. And my little girl had to endure more hours in a car, with a sky rocket temperature. I felt like I had been wrapped up in a blanket of guilt.

The children took it so well. They really did. I was so proud of them. They were disappointed, but I had ignorance on my side, as they had never been to Disney World or Sea World before, so they had no idea exactly what they were missing. Faith endured her high temps without medicine (meds make her puke) and the fever broke the following night. She still has the nose stuff, but the wee one is feeling much better.

So we’re home. I feel rested. I’ve been able to find the blessing in that the Lord allowed our family to go completely untouched for the first week so that we could truly relax. I’ve come home to my favorite flowers (scarlet bee balm) blooming in the garden that I thought I would miss during my absence. I have to believe that there was a reason we had to come home a week early. The Lord wanted us back home. And here we are. After all of it, vacation and missed vacation, it feels good to be home.

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Friday Wrap Up

I feel like I have a thousand little loose ends to tie before leaving on this two week vacation. I’ve a bunch of cliff hangers from this week on the blog too, so here they are:

The cyst burst this week….lovely. But at least I know it is a cyst based on its contents. (I hope you’ve already eaten.) Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to squeeze it back to normalcy. Ok, now you’re gagging. But it looks better, and I shouldn’t be as self conscious on the beach (minus the skin hanging from various locations.)

Which reminds me. I wasn’t able to stick with my workout program as my knees became incredibly tender from the running. I did stick to including a yogurt a day in my diet. The working out I did, must have jostled my metabolism, as it moved me past my plateau weight, and as of today, I am one pound away from my goal nursing weight. I’m very tickled about that. Nursing has its perks — well, until you stop nursing, and then those other super perky things, shrink to almost invisible.

Ok…moving on to the three moles I had removed. Guess what? Two of them really needed to be removed according to the test results. Mild dysplastic nevi. Nothing super serious, but considered pre-cancerous. So after vacation, I scoot back in for the doctor to take two more deeper chunks out of my skin to make sure they got everything. Not so glad about the holes in my body, but I’m glad I went in.

Maggie. My sweet fiddle player, has a giant scab over half of her tail as it mends. And she has managed to clear out almost every piece of chicken in the fridge. She’s doing much better, but continues to boycott all pills. I can’t tell you how thankful I am for her recovery, and now the sighting of those giant tail wags again.

Now…drum roll please….WE GOT THE TOURING ODYSSEY!!!! I lurve it!!! Sagebrush exterior, black and tan interior. It is SWEET!!! I was poking around in it with Ken at midnight last night, and it felt like we were sitting in an airplane with all of the nifty controls and lighting. Ken already admitted that he enjoyed smoking another car off of a light change on the way home. (How ridiculous are we?).

Lastly, my baby girl slept through the night. And as of 10:00am, she’s still snoozing. Whoo! Hooo!! Poor girl must have been so worn out from car shopping. I couldn’t have asked for a better little shopper yesterday.

And so, the rest of my day is a frazzled mess of last minute errands and packing. The kids are so excited they are almost down to counting hours. This family has so needed this vacation. As anyone who owns a business knows, vacations are so rare. So are true weekends. Ken and I were just discussing yesterday, that if it was just us, we would have canceled already. The downside of owning your own business or in our case businesses, is that working never ends. It has been too long. I thank the good Lord that we have a small gaggle of kids to force us on a vacation, or we’d really be boring sticks in the mud.

It’s a happy day. 🙂

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