Days 146 - 152

SATURDAY - FRIDAY

5 months in and it is amazing. Yesterday was Thanksgiving, one of the most stressful holidays of the year. Last year, I ended up in the emergency room because of a panic attack. This year, well, I decided I didn't want to do that again. I had heard of therapy horse rides and thought, why not. Jared loves to ride horses, or he did when he was younger, who knows it might be fun. It took some planning, the first two places I looked into didn't pan out, so after a prayer, I found the third place, A Step Above Stables.

I asked the guy for a good place to eat on Thanksgiving and he directed me to a place called Brother's in Young Harris, GA, where his daughter worked. So I called and got reservations. It was all falling into place.

Yesterday morning, we all got in the van and headed to the North Georgia Mountains. Along the way, Zerin and Mali started fighting, so when we got gas, we made them walk to the Kroger behind the gas station. Then things were going great, we were on time, life was good, then Daxton said, "I don't feel well." He said it a couple of times, turned green and puked all over himself and his dad's jacket, which was in his lap. We pulled over. Got him stripped down and away we went. We stopped at a Dollar General and got him some new clothes. I got, what I thought was a size 8 in boys, him some pants, a shirt, and a jacket. The pants were huge, but I managed, thank you Heavenly Father, to find a safety pin.

We had lost a few minutes shopping, but managed to find an open Burger King about 3 minutes before we got to the stables and ate lunch.

Daxton was afraid to ride, but he was brave and we all got on the horses and off we went for an hour's ride. It was peaceful. I didn't think about anything. We just enjoyed the ride. This is not something I would have ever enjoyed in the past. I would have found it a complete waste of time in my busy schedule. It was really nice, though. The trees were pretty and the company was amazing. It was Mali and Daxton's first rides and they both did well.

After the ride, we had 3 hours to spend before we our reservation. I put Brother's into the GPS and it took us to North Carolina. I thought it was odd, but what were the chances of there being two restaurants named the same thing 30 minutes away from each other?

We went for a drive, got lost, had to back down a single lane road, almost hit a tree, and laughed a lot. Jared ran a red light, after reading a sign about yielding to U-turns, he just went. We laughed some more. We went to a local Wal-mart, broke up into three teams, Jared and Daxton, Taisha and Zerin, and Mali and I. We had an ABC scavenger hunt. It was so much fun. We were racing around the store taking pictures of different products. Taisha and Zerin won. At the end, we helped Jared and Daxton find the rest of their items. It was fun. Really fun.

We decided to go over to the restaurant to see if we could eat early, only to find out we were in the wrong Brother's in the wrong state. We hopped in the car and raced back to Georgia. We made it in record time and were only 7 minutes late for our reservation. The food was yummy. The company was amazing. We laughed over Jared's running a light. Then the discussion turned to running stop signs. Someone said, "if only stop signs had words written on them." We all started laughing so hard. Taisha choked on water, Mali had water come out of her nose. It was so very funny, because stop signs do have a word on them "stop."

Then Mali said something snarky to Daxton and quickly left the table, Jared turned and was about to demand she give him her cell phone, when he realized the girl he was talking to wasn't Mali. We laughed some more.

After dinner, we went around the table and said what we were thankful for. The unanimous thought was being together as a family. Mali actually said, "I didn't know Thanksgiving could be fun."

The 2 hour ride home was quiet. We got home, said prayers and headed to bed. I asked Jared if this is what Thanksgiving was supposed to be like. He responded, "Yes. Being together, laughing, not everything going perfect, but yes, this is what Thanksgiving is supposed to be like."

Thank you for 5 months of recovery.