So Much to Be Thankful For

So much to be thankful for this past month.  Including a budding photographer daughter who took this picture ;o)

We had a full house for Thanksgiving.  Our extended family does not live close by, so we celebrated with friends.  It was still very fun and special, and has been our tradition for many years.  We had new friends and old friends over and the missionaries (volunteers who serve people in our area).

Two unforgettable things occurred on Thanksgiving, a good one, and one we would probably all like to forget.

1) After the main course, we invited a whole bunch of people over to play games and have pie.  Everyone was to bring a pie to share.  I am kicking myself for not getting a better picture when the dessert bar was completely full of pie and all sorts of desserts.  It was fun and festive and very memorable, and very delicious!

The reason I didn't get a good picture was because of #2 (keep reading).

2) Just as everyone arrived and the dessert bar was full of all those pies, our 12 year old friend choked on a piece of hard candy and puked all over the floor right NEXT to the pies!  Like I said, this was at the very moment the last guest arrived, so there were people and pie everywhere!

So I tag-teamed her mama and got her over to her daughter, I ran like lightening to get towels, BLEACH, mops, etc.  And the Papa started cleaning up the mess while we cleared the area.

Poor girl… she had just told us at dinner her unforgettable Thanksgiving when she was an adorable 3 year old.  Now she will have a story to rival that one, bringing balance to the world.  I guess we can't have too much cuteness running around all at once ;o)  This was not so fun or festive, but very memorable.

After the "Hazmed" clean up, people actually ate pie-- and no one reported getting sick.  Whew!

Later in the evening, everyone broke off into groups and went shopping.  That was the beginning of shopping runs for my husband and I over the next 3 days.  Luckily, we didn't get into the crazy crowds and things went pretty smoothly.  I am not finished, but it was a good start.  I got gifts sent off to my far away family, and my Christmas cards are even finished!

We decided to get new ornaments for the tree this year.  We really need another tree so we can have a tree for all the kid ornaments.  I adore the kid-tree look, and I've always let my kids help set up the tree and it certainly looked kid-decorated some years.  But I decided after 20 years of marriage, to spruce the tree up a little and try a little something new.  I am glad I did.  We are all okay- no damage done even though we didn't use the old stuff.  It was still fun to look at the old ornaments.  Here are a few that I love:

And here are the pictures taken by my youngest.

Even Daisy got into the action:

I have been thinking about when the girls were little and all the little lessons we had about gratitude at Thanksgiving time.  Those lessons often involved making a long list of the things we were thankful for.  We made written lists on paper, talked about our lists, made giant chain-link lists with slips of paper that had a word telling what we were thankful were.  We talked about pilgrims and read different picture books each night from the books I collected.  I really do miss that sweet and innocent time.

Our family has changed and we didn't have a long list written any where this year.  But I can see that as our family has matured, we express that gratitude more often, all year long.  We kneel in prayer each day together as a family and individually, and hopefully begin each prayer with what we are grateful for.  I do hear thank you in my home at least daily for little things.  We help each other often, which is an expression of appreciation and gratitude for one another.  There is room for us to show greater gratitude for sure, but I can't help but feel thankful for the tender gratitude we feel in our relationships with each other in our home.  I feel truly blessed for the many, many blessings I enjoy, but also for the hardships that have stretched me (even though at the time I tend to not feel so grateful for them).  If I had written a gratitude list this year, the top of my list would have been family, friends, home, food, clothing, the simple things in life, and the knowledge and testimony of a Savior and Father in Heaven.