I love Thanksgiving

I love Thanksgiving.

I would have to say that Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. It seems as though it is one of the few holidays in the year where I feel that we truly enjoy being together as a family and just savor our time together. I know that some people get frustrated with Thanksgiving because essentially we should be thankful for everything God has blessed us with every one of the 365 days out of the year. So in theory, Thanksgiving shouldn't be that different from any other day. I just enjoy having the opportunity to be able to reflect and appreciate my blessings.

I have been blessed in my childhood with many memorable times. Thanksgiving is definitely one of them. Since my family shared about 3 acres with my dad's brother and his mother, I grew up very close to my cousins. We did everything together. We always had Thanksgiving and Christmas together. I would have to say that my most favorite and memorable Thanksgiving would have to be the one we had last year. Part of the reason for that is because my brother Andrew got married the Sunday after Thanksgiving last year. My entire family was there as well as all my cousins I grew up with.

This was especially enjoyable as it had been at least 15 years since all of us have been able to be together for Thanksgiving. It was just like old times. There was my dad's brother and his wife, their five kids (my cousins) where four of them are married now with kids, my brothers, my little family and my sister with her son. It was great.
Here's all of us cousins. It's funny to see how much we've changed from all those family pictures from when we were younger. It was wonderful. I will never forget it. I just hope it doesn't take us another 15 years to get back together again, but it gets hard as we all have families of our own.

I Miss My Brother

My older brother, Andrew, moved to Colorado Springs this past summer.

Andrew and I have always been very close. He was always the one I turned to when something was going wrong, or if I just needed to vent off some steam. When I started college, Andrew lived only a block away from me, so it was really nice to be so close to him and to hang out whenever I wanted to. He was essential in helping me get connected with an awesome group of God-loving Christians. He has always been there for me when I needed him and even when I didn't. I have always depended on him to lend a listening ear or to help give me advice on something. I adore him. Andrew gets me like only a brother can. In some selfish way, I never really thought about looking elsewhere for friendships because I always assumed he would be there. He had always been there for me (location wise) until now. It's not like he isn't here for me now, but it's just different now that he is living two hours away from me.

Don't get me wrong, I am very happy for him and that he has gone back to school and gotten a new job and is supporting his family. I am very happy for him and definitely proud of him. I'm just sad for me. I guess I just always imagined that we would live close to each other and raise our kids together. I know our kids are still very young and there still is time, but I guess I'm having a harder time adjusting to the change than I thought.

I miss being able to stop by his store at any time just to say "hi". I miss seeing him at church every Sunday because he was there. I miss making his favorite burritos just because I knew that if I was making them, he would be there for dinner and take left-overs with him. I miss going to chick flick movies with him because Jason doesn't take me to chick flicks. He was there when I graduated college. He was the Best Man at my wedding, and I watched him cry the whole entire time. Just like I cried my eyes out when he got married. We just have this special bond, and I miss him so much. I miss watching how my girls adore Andrew and love playing with him. He was there when my girls were born.

Here he is holding Meghan the day she was born.
This is Andrew with Audrey about an hour after she was born. He is such a wonderful uncle to my girls. They adore him and look forward to seeing him. They still ask if they are going to see him, Lindsay, and David whenever we go to Nana and Papa's house every Sunday for dinner.

I guess I never thought about his leaving until recently. Maybe that's because I wouldn't let myself think about it because I knew it would make me cry. My oldest brother, Ted, moved away when I was only 14, so he was never really around when I became the person I am today. My sister Sarah and I are really close, but that is because we are sisters. We will always be close. My relationship with Andrew is just different. We have always looked to each other for support and friendship and that unconditional love only a sibling can give.

I made Andrew's favorite burritos a couple weeks ago and cried the whole time because I knew he wasn't there to eat them. Last week I was showing someone at work a picture of Audrey on my computer and I came across a picture of Andrew with Audrey and I started crying. He left a voice message on my phone today and I cried. Not like his message said anything important, but I just miss him terribly. I know this sounds weird, but I feel like a part of me is missing. I miss my friend--my brother.

"Shupa"

My oldest daughter, Meghan, has an imaginary friend. Her name is Shupa. From what I understand, Shupa is like a shadow that can fit in your hands, but is every bit human as anyone else. I think Meghan got the shadow thing from watching Peter Pan. Shupa has been known to play with Meghan and Audrey, go to the store with us, and even share Meghan's bed with her. One time Meghan was "carrying" Shupa in her hands at the store when she had to go potty. Meghan handed Shupa to Jason and quickly made her way to the bathroom. When Meghan was finished, she remembered to ask Jason to have Shupa back.

Meghan continues to talk about Shupa and takes her along to many places. The other day when playing along with Meghan's stories about Shupa, I told her that Shupa came to school with me and got to meet all my students. Here's our conversation:

Me: Meghan, did you know that Shupa came to school with me today?

Meghan: Really? But Shupa's not here now. She's at home. She's a little bit sick.

Me: Oh, really. I thought she was fine because she came to my school today.

Meghan: Well she has a tummy ache. She's at home now because she needed to throw up in the toilet.

Me: Ew! Gross! Good thing she threw up in the toilet, huh?

Meghan: Yeah, and then she threw up on my bed!

Me: Ew! What are you going to do?

Meghan: And then she threw up on your bed and Audrey's bed!

Me: Well, I hope Shupa feels better soon. Maybe we need to give her some medicine when we get home, huh?

Meghan: Yeah. That's a good idea.

The thing that gets funnier with this is that when we got home and got the girls' jammies on to go to bed, Meghan insisted that she not get on her bed because Shupa threw up on it! The imagination on that girl is so amazing sometimes! Thankfully she was satisfied with my pretend washing and cleaning her bed so it would be clean enough for her to sleep in her own bed that night.

The Funny Things I Hear Being a Teacher

The other day at school started like any other. It comes time for me to let my students into my class in the morning, and most of my boys come in singing the song for the free credit report commercials. "F to the R to the E-E-C-R-E-D-I-T dot com baby!" It never ceases to amaze me that kids are so willing to memorize stupid jingles like this, but when I ask them to study and memorize our vocabulary words for the week they don't remember a single thing!

This morning everyone was buzzing about the results of the election. In honor of our election yesterday, we had our own middle school polling where the kids voted on the next president with all the same candidates as the national one, but we decided to add a few of our own school amendments. We found a way to make the wording so complex and completely unable to understand so the kids would feel what it really is like to be voting for some of those amendments out there. Some of our amendments were (in understandable terms) whether or not i-Pods should be allowed at school, not ever having to do homework but only if all your trash is dumped into the oceans, trading class rewards for having to do an extra math assignment, and whether or not after school detention should be extended an extra 15 minutes. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the looks on students' faces when they tried to understand what they were voting for.

With me working in the middle of nowhere in an extremely conservative community, it was no wonder the voting outcome for our school was for Senator McCain. When my kids walked in this morning, there were some severely somber faces. I had a kid come up to me this morning and say, "Mrs. Gordon, if Obama is our new president, does that make us an 'Obama-nation?'" I couldn't believe what I heard. I cracked up laughing so hard. Only in hickville would I hear a remark like that. These kids crack me up.

It's not just these sorts of things that I find amusing, but also the kind of political remarks you can only imagine they hear a parent say at home. I especially like comments like, "I don't like Bush because he is the one who raised our gas prices." I don't have enough time in my day outside of my normal lessons to explain how our president doesn't directly dictate the price of oil. There are so many other variables related to that, I wouldn't know where to begin. I teach English and Reading.

Maybe I should start taking down some of the funny things I hear my students say. I could write a bestseller some day...