a Charlie Brown lunch

I talked about some happy Thanksgiving memories, but Thanksgiving 2014 will go down in our family history as a bad one.  On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Maddie woke up sick.  She had a slight fever and stayed on the couch most of the day watching movies, but by Wednesday lunchtime she was well enough to join us at the table.

Unfortunately, another kid woke up with a fever on Thanksgiving morning and a third developed one mid-morning.  Before cancelling the day's plans, we made a few calls to family who encouraged us to come to dinner anyway, saying they would risk exposure to germs since Maddie's case had been mild and quick.

Wrong move.  😬 On Friday morning we began putting up our Christmas tree and by afternoon, a full-blown case of the flu hit our house with high fevers, chills, sore throats, headaches, and body aches. This was the scene in our house while Brian was stringing the lights:




And despite all the festivity around him, this little guy only managed to put one ornament on the tree before he curled back up on the floor. 

It was bad.  Brian and I managed to finish the decorating before we succumbed, too, and it was days before anyone was well enough to cook dinner or go to work, let alone take care of the long Christmas to-do list. 

In those few hours between bouts of wretchedness that year, after Maddie got better and before aninyone else got sick, we made a happy memory.   On Wednesday afternoon, we served a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving lunch.

Today we did the same.  Today everyone is well and we are very thankful for it.

We popped some popcorn, toasted some bread, handed out gourmet jelly beans, and portioned out pretzel sticks.

Tomorrow we will feast on turkey and mashed potatoes, but today we enjoyed a few simple pleasures.