I hate not eating dairy. But I found out I like almond milk.

He said

Way back when we had originally planned to be camping this weekend. We were going to go somewhere close (likely Golden Pond RV Resort) and then make the drive back in town to have Thanksgiving Dinner with the family which would be easy enough. It was going to be our second last trip of the year and we were hoping we could wrangle camping friends to come along like last year. Plans started getting complicated for everyone, not to mention we’d potentially be pulling Emelia out of gymnastics training for two of her weekly sessions.

So, Danielle & I decided to pull the plug on camping this weekend, I offered myself to work the weekend, and we were completely open for the family plans for Thanksgiving. Especially because David & Linda’s family were going to be down we wanted to be available for as much of the time we got together as possible. We still have one more crack at getting out for a weekend of camping, the last weekend of the month, but even then if the weather doesn’t cooperate I won’t be too chuffed. We can get away with booking last minute as most people have already winterized their trailers and put them away. And truthfully, as the weather gets cooler and cooler, I am surprisingly okay okay with the season coming to an end – we had a fantastic camping season!

I managed to have a schedule this week that allowed me to catch a good chunk of Emelia’s gymnastics practices on Monday and Thursday. I know I say this every single week, but I am blown away with her development this year. Her focus and dedication is really paying off, and the connection she has with her coach, Alex this year has unlocked a lot of her stumbling blocks last year. She can, quite readily, tell you all the things she was not doing right last year. With us getting her list of the three competitions they will be attending this year, our hope is that she can see a medal or two on the podium, and even maybe qualify for Provincials. It won’t be for not working, that is for sure.

As we mentioned this weekend was Thanksgiving and so our plans really were focused on spending time with my family. This year Matthew & Shawn hosted and we got together on Sunday instead of Monday because I was off work and Emelia didn’t have gymnastics. With David & Linda’s family travelling from Welland, it’s nice for them to have today to recuperate from the driving. Linda’s last round of chemo had some really nasty side effects, so we really happy that she’d recovered well enough to make the trip. She’s such a fighter and has such an inspiring outlook on the battle she is in, that we are amazed at her positivity. So, it was extra special that we could all be together to celebrate the things we’re all most thankful for – which I don’t think I’m speaking out of turn – “family”. There was lots of laughs. Lots of food. And lots of time. It was perfect.

Today, we were rewarded with the ability to sleep in, have nowhere to be and nothing that had to be done. A while back Mom had bought Emelia a Groupon for the other trampoline park in London, Flying Squirrel. They happened to be open today, so it was the perfect place to take Emelia to burn off two hours of energy from the two gymnastics practices that were canceled this weekend in lieu of the holiday weekend. The weather has been summer-like and we have been able to enjoy it all without the rush of the normal day-to-day. Emelia has admitted she’s tired and won’t fight going to bed on time or even early. And Danielle and I have a night of relaxing lined up after that. Can’t think of a better way to close out a week, when we’ve been thinking about how lucky and thankful we are!

She said

This weekend was exactly what we needed, lots of time with family and friends. As John mentioned we were originally hoping to camp this weekend but decided that we would pass on camping with all the dinners and activities around the holidays it just didnt make sense to book a camping trip away that we might not be at that much. This year we would have been camping just the three of us and felt it was just better to stay home and take in all the family time we could.

John had to work on Saturday so this left Emelia and I to have a day together. She and I started hunting around for her halloween costume and made a fun day of it. The day flew by and before we knew it the day was over and we were heading home to make supper and have dinner as a family. After dinner we were invited to our close friends the Sherwoods for drinks and to watch the Leafs game. Emelia and Olivia of course were over the moon at the plans and spent the night playing and entertaining each other. We said our good-byes late and headed home to get Miss E to bed.

Sunday we all took the morning at a beautifully lazy pace and then started getting organized to head over for dinner. Part of the getting organized was planning some specialized food for Emelia. We haven’t really chatted much about this but we are in the middle of some investigation for Emelia and on going problems she is having with her stomach. Back in May Emelia got sick, sickest we have ever seen her. The doctor tested her for a bunch of possibilities that was causing her to be so sick. In the end the testing concluded it was just a nasty virus and the rest of the tests came back negative for anything more than that.

Fast-forward to now, we are months away from this virus and Emelia is still getting these random stomach attacks, they are knocking her for a loop, wearing her out and are very painful. I brought her into the doctor in late August to start investigating the cause. The doctor figured likely it was one of two things both stemming from her stomach virus – one being gastritis OR short term (or long term) lactose intolerance that was caused from damage done to stomach in May. We started out dealing with gastritis, medication for a month to see if that would fix the lining of her stomach. That didn’t work, after we were to take her off all dairy to test for intolerance. Well we are a week in and there is little to no improvement – well other than a grumpy kid who hates the vegan cheese and wants real cheese back. So our next steps is now more detailed testing, I need to call the doctor tomorrow and see what we can do to get her in to figure out our next steps.

Anyway, back to Thanksgiving. Once we found a dairy free treat for Emelia to enjoy for dessert and we got the food for dinner all picked up we headed over to Matthew and Shawn’s to help get things going for dinner. It is always amazing to get everyone together, we never want to miss any time together and cherish every single holiday with family. We all know that these moments especially since the kids are growing up so fast are few and far between. Time with family is beyond precious!

Today we had another lazy start of the day, we all needed this lazy morning to just recharge and no rush off to anything. We knew that we wanted to still do something special as a family. Emelia received a gift from Helen and Doug last year at the end of school as a congratulations for all the hard work she put in last year. The gift was a 2 hour jump pass to the new trampoline park in town. The only hitch with the pass is that it had to be used Monday through Thursday. This is a challenge for Emelia between gymnastics training and dance during the week we do not have a lot of down time for her. So with gymnastics training cancelled this weekend for the holiday it was the perfect activity for the day. She happily jumped, did tricks and showed off her gymnastics skills for 2 hours. By the time we were done she was pretty spent and ready to take the rest of the day at a perfect lazy pace, that sounds perfect to us as well.

That was Thanksgiving in a nutshell, lots of time with family and friends – everything we are thankful for.