1) Kevin and I left for a cross-country trip during the summer of 2005. We'd been married for a year and a half and were planning to make some babies soon (it would take a couple of years, but we didn't know that yet) so we decided the time was right. Kevin took a leave of absence from work at Men's Wearhouse and we took a month driving through Colorado, to Oregon, then Montana, and back through the U.P. The first night of our trip, we'd been driving for 19 hours and had made it to Estes Park. But the Coleman national campground guide misled us and the campground we'd planned to stay at was nowhere to be found. As I recall, the name had changed or something. Anyway, as we drove, and drove, and drove through the darkness, seeing deer and elk at the side of the road, I remember thinking, "there is no one here to help us. Mom and Dad are not figuring this out while I sleep in the backseat. We are it. We have to find something. This is the new vacation." We eventually found a campsite, and the rest is history.
2) The first day we came home from the hospital with Nellie, someone muttered those words I'd heard hundreds of times before from a person holding a crying baby: "I think she needs her mommy." They passed her over to me and of course, I took her and tried to appear competent. But really, I was thinking, "nononononono you don't get it. I do not know what to do for this baby. I don't even know this baby. Wet? Hungry? Uncomfortable? In pain? I have absolutely no idea. They should not have let me leave the hospital with this child. But - I guess the buck stops here. No one else is going to mother her. I have to do it." And, of course, I figured it out eventually. I'd say I've 87% figured it out.
3) This year, I hosted Thanksgiving--really hosted, as in, I made the turkey and some other stuff--for the first time. Last year I hosted but it was a potluck and my dad made all the hard stuff. This year was technically a Wacyk year, but my parents went to visit Laurel and Dave and everyone else went to their in-laws (or almost-in-laws), so we got to have dinner with Kevin's family. And since John's in the U.P. and Lisa doesn't cook turkey, plus we're nicely centrally located and, you know, living in John's house, we offered to host. I was alternately excited and terrified, because I'd never made turkey, stuffing, gravy, or mashed potatoes (I know, it's weird), all of which I was now responsible for, plus the cranberry sauce and cornbread. I felt like a grown-up buying the turkey, but that was the easy part.
Luckily, I had help. Pam came Wednesday to help clean and play with the kids, and John was home by 9:00. Sarah and Lisa brought lots of delicious vegetable dishes. There were relatively few mishaps. I did try to pull a leg off the turkey thinking it was the neck, and the turkey was still a little frozen Wednesday night even though I had put it in the fridge on Sunday. It took hours to make the gravy, and seriously I ended up with buckets of the stuff. DJ was up all night Wednesday night, plus I had to get up at 5:30 to get everything ready and into the roaster by 6:30. BUT--in the end, it went well! And I found out that when your mom's around, it's easy to revert to a child-like state, but when she's out of the state and it's all on you, you really can cook a Thanksgiving dinner.
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