Thanksgiving- Round 2!

I had dreaded Thanksgiving day a little for obvious reasons. My Mama wasn't going to be there, and I couldn't do anything to change that. HOWEVER- I knew That I had to do my best to make it a good day for not only myself, but for Nina, Aunt Kim, Kyson, Daddy, Josh and the girls. We ALL needed a good Thanksgiving day where we talked about Mom, didn't avoid the "elephant in the room", and enjoyed each other! I was determined to make that happen. That's exactly how she would have wanted it to be!
But a bit of a damper was put on our best laid plans on Wednesday when Becky had to be admitted to the hospital for an infection in her hand. It had gotten pretty bad and wasn't getting better with just antibiotics. So she needed an iv, which meant hospital time. She sent me a text asking me to do her a favor. She told me that she wanted everyone at our house on Thanksgiving and for us to go on with our meal as planned. I said "Don't do that to me!" Her response? "yes I am. You can do it." So- against what I WANTED to do (or not do)- we carried on with our plans- minus Memaw.
The girls and I got up on Thanksgiving morning and got the coffee going and turned on "My Macy's parade" as Macie Claire calls it. (She even asked me one day why there wasn't a Brenna's parade! ha! I love that kid!) Much to my surprise- their interest in the parade was much better this year than last year! They usually watch about 5 minutes of it and are DONE. But they loved it this year, and only complained during the dancing. Can't blame them. I can only take so much of that myself.
We were all happy when Daddy got home from work! We hadn't seen him since Saturday!! But when he got there, the hustle started! Turkeys to fry and sweet potato casserole to make!
I told Nina and Aunt Kim to come over early and hang out like we always do. Thanksgiving has always been a DAY of being together for us. We usually gathered at Mom and Dad's in the morning and spent the day together. Cooking and baking and just BEING TOGETHER. It has always been a wonderful day- and I intended to make this year just as wonderful. I was excited to see them all drive up about 1:00. And I was SUPER excited when my Nina handed me this!!!

A Pie, you say? Not just A PIE. It's a pecan crème pie!!! I'd attempt to tell you what it is, but all I can say is that it's a Huffstuttler thing! And it is Yummy in my Tummy!
We enjoyed hanging out and visiting while I got things finished up. Even if Aunt Kim can make her great nieces squeal louder than anything I've ever heard!!! I had to send them all THREE up stairs to keep my sanity! haha! But I guess that is what Aunts are good for.... having the type of fun that Mommies won't let you have! I have so many wonderful memories of hanging out with my Aunt Kim and doing fun things when I was little. And it warms my heart to watch my girls have that same relationship with her. Memories in the making!!! (however if they continue to make their memories so LOUDLY- I'm gonna have to ask them to make their memories at Aunt Kim's house before they come over! haha!)
Seriously- in the family department- how did I get so blessed to love and be loved by so many wonderful people?? These two are always in my corner, and I couldn't do it without them!

Despite the pouring rain, everyone started arriving around 4:45. The weather was absolutely awful. But that wasn't gonna put a damper (no pun intended) on our evening!
When the food was all set out and ready to go, we joined hands to pray. But it just didn't feel right. SO many things were missing in that room. Mom was a big missing piece for all of us, but we knew this day was coming, and we had all mentally prepared ourselves for the void we would feel. But there was more. Not only was my Mama not there, my other Mama wasn't there. Josh and I were BOTH missing our Mama's in that prayer circle. My heart wasn't prepared for that. It didn't dawn on me how hard that would actually be to not have BOTH of them there until that moment. I knew it would be hard without Mom, and I knew it would be hard without Becky....but when the reality of those two situations together set in.... well, it wasn't pretty. As we all got quiet and ready to pray, Papa said "can we get Becky on the phone?" Um- YES WE CAN! Better than that- we can face time her! So that is exactly what we did. We all had Mom in our hearts, and now we had Becky "there" too. Now we could pray! And that is exactly what we did. She saw us. We could see her. It was far from perfect because her laugh couldn't be heard all over the house all night long, but we made the best out of a crummy situation!
Everyone filled their plates with more food than we could possibly eat, and gathered in various locations.

Kids? What kids? Oh yeah. They were eating on the back porch and watching cartoons! They were in complete heaven, but I never thought to go out there and take a picture. Out of sight, out of mind. Right? Yep- Mother of the Year right here! Just mail me my trophy.
We all ate till we were beyond STUFFED!!!
Just a variety of other pictures that I stole from Jana and Sue's facebook pages...
Jana and Dude... oh, and SUE!

My Daddy! You're never too old to curl up in your Daddy's lap!

Everyone needs a goofy Aunt Jana!!

And a Mommy photo bomber!

Sweet cousins..

But don't let the sweet smiles fool you. This is the side of them that we see way more often!

Aunt Rhonda, Abel, and Nana

Probably the BEST picture of the night! Hanna and Papa doing the "duck face"!! But Hanna was laughing so hard she couldn't do it.

Nana, Rhonda, Sue, Steve, and Jana:

Nana and Hanna: (Nana, Jana, Hanna, Brenna..... it seems that we like names that RHYME around here! Either that or we like to cause as much confusion as humanly possible when we are all together.)

I would attempt to tell you what is going on in this picture, but with the group pictured, I am just gonna assume it was all a bunch of BOLOGNA! :)

I love these ladies so much! I am blessed to be a part of the Jackson Clan!

The GIRLS!!! We took this picture-

And I said "This isn't right! Memaw isn't in it." So we fixed that!

And this right here is where the Jackson Clan got started:

These two people right here- well, they are pretty awesome.
While we were all focusing on missing Becky at the dinner table, we had no idea that one week later our precious Nana would be taken to the hospital via ambulance for what we thought was a horrible stomach bug that hit right after Thanksgiving. It was a scary night, as she was so very sick. But thanks to the wonderful doctors and nurses that took care of her, she is headed home as I type!! She had a small bowel obstruction that required a tube in her nose and no food for almost 10 days. Now we just have to get some calories in her and keep her moving in the right direction!!!! We are thankful for our sweet Nana and thank Jesus for healing her so that we get to keep her a little while longer! He knew we weren't done with her yet. Neither was He!