Thankful.

(This post is so late...I am trying to get caught up on my blog today!)



Well, there was no appetizer table fire this year.



But there was the moment when David dared to disagree that Colin Firth played the best "Mr. Darcy" ever.

Blasphemy!

The topic has been added to the "Holiday Banished Topics" list.



No one disrespects Colin Firth in my house.

:)


Seriously though, we had a really lovely Thanksgiving.



This is going to be a long post with a lot of details that are things I don't want to forget.



Mom arrived early in the week and was so helpful.  Honestly, I don't think I would have made it this year without the extra help.  Well, we would have...we just would have had Thanksgiving in a dirty house!  As it was, Mom came and worked so hard getting me caught up on laundry, cleaning chandeliers, etc. while I buzzed around tending to our usual schedule and flurry of appointments.



She emailed a few weeks ago and insisted that I schedule Patricia to come and clean for me before Thanksgiving (her treat!)  I am a "clean freak."  But this does NOT mean that my house is always clean.  In fact, lately (like many of my friends in this stage of life) I've only been able to keep up with the essentials and it's been making me crazy.  So to have a moment when the house was ALL clean (at once!), linens and towels all freshly washed and changed, and laundry caught up was amazing.  That is therapy for my soul (and lasted probably a half hour, but a glorious half hour).  The downfall was that the only time Patricia had available was 2:30 the day before Thanksgiving!!  So we spent the morning/afternoon getting the house tidy, beds changed, etc. and made pie dough and put it in the freezer, took the turkey out of the brine and then headed out to a movie.



A movie!  The day before Thanksgiving!

I have NEVER done that.  We went and saw "Rise of the Guardians"  (So good!) and I got to sit and eat movie treats and snuggle my Andrew while my house was cleaned!

Can you say, "Thankful"?



It was really so wonderful.  They weren't finished in the house until 7:40!  So it was nearly 8pm and dinner prep hadn't started, the table wasn't even set!  I don't think I've ever been so unprepared for thanksgiving (except perhaps the first year I hosted and had no idea what I was doing).  But Dan's family had arrived and everyone helped and the table was set in no time, stock was boiling, flowers arranged, name cards made and placed, pies were baking (the silver tea service was even polished!) and we were in bed by 11:45!



I decided that I should be unprepared every year as many hands really did make light work ~ it was so great!  I can't say how much  I appreciated the help.



I LOVE this picture of the cousins.  Look at all of those boys!  I did not grow up near family (we had adopted family) but I love that my kids love their cousins so much and get to spend holidays with them.

Thanksgiving Day was just low key and everything came together easily.  After years of hosting, Mom and I have our system down of what each of us do and it goes very smoothly.  It's not stressful at all, and very enjoyable.  We watched the parade as we prepared the food and then football, of course!

Mike's family arrived in the afternoon and put together a beautiful table of appetizers which we nibbled on until dinner was ready.








Dinner was fun with our usual traditions of sharing what we are thankful for (so much!) followed by Thanksgiving Mad Libs.  Which the kids love.  And with seven year olds, there is always potty humor, which I normally don't allow, but I just can't resist the kids' laughter when I read sentences like...."My grandma makes the best Lemon pie!  It smells like poop." 



We've never claimed to be the most sophisticated group.





Our Thanksgiving tradition is for the men to do the dishes while the ladies retire to the Living Room to look through the Black Friday ads and coordinate Christmas gift ideas.  

We finished the night off with Gingerbread house decorating, which is also tradition.  The kids love this and have started really looking forward to it each year and talking about it in advance.



 

 

We really had a nice thanksgiving.  Everyone was so helpful and I even came home on Black Friday to find the china put away and so much of the clean up done.  What a gift!

I laid in bed the night before Thanksgiving thinking about all of the things I am thankful for....

I remembered when we were newly married and we bought a new mattress.  I finally didn't roll to the hole in the center of the bed and I had room to turn over without waking up!  (Dan is not a small guy!) For weeks, my prayers starting with giving thanks for our new mattress...and our little apartment.

There is always something to be thankful for.

I hope to be able to teach my kids and be an example to them that genuine gratitude for small blessings is so essential for contentment in our own circumstances...appreciation for those around us....a positive mental outlook....proper perspective on what is important....and an awareness that what we have really are gifts given to us.

We've been looking at some potential decisions to make about Dan's job that has lifted the veil that sometimes falls in front of our eyes when we settle into routine.  It's so easy to take people and every day blessings for granted when they are part of our day to day life.  Lately, I've looked with fresh clarity at our life here.  Our family, our friends, our church, our school, our home, our community, our annual traditions....Though not perfect, we have a life filled to the brim with sweet blessings...and this Thanksgiving, I am deeply grateful for all of it.