End of Thanksgiving Weekend

Since Thanksgiving is all about family, food, and feeling thankful for both, here are a few photos of our day that hopefully express my gratitude for all that I have.

The day before Thanksgiving Jordan helped me make an apple pie. She also made banana bread all on her own from start to finish (I guess that job of mine can now pass down to her!).



Earlier that day, Jensen helped me make sugared pecans that we took to some of our friends and neighbors. Those are a traditionally southern thing that I now love. I didn't have my camera out that early in the morning so I missed the shot of her in her apron...so cute!

In goes the turkey on the big day itself.

The whole feast.

The boys that I love.

And the girls that I love too!

I've lost track of how many of these hand turkeys I've received over the years, but I love each and every one.

Thanksgiving Memory

This will not be my "Daily December" post (hope to write another one later today), but I wanted to get this written down.

We celebrated Thanksgiving here in our own home...our first one at home since our fire. We spent the day with our good friends on our street, the Enochses and the Kimberlins. We had a mini progressive...appetizers at Jen's, main dinner at our house, and dessert at Nancy's. It was a fun day. The kids all played and ran together all day long. It's a wonderful feeling to be part of a neighborhood like ours especially on holidays where you have no family near to celebrate with.



Before dinner at our house, Jim pulled out an article from the newspaper and said he wanted to read something to all of us.

On Thanksgiving, families gather together and express gratitude for the bounty in their lives.

But what is family these days? Of course, it's parents, children and siblings--blood realtives. but with American families becoming so mobile, so scattered and so displaced, many people form close family-like attachments to friends, making them siblings by choice, brothers and sisters of life.

Perhaps this year, the prosperity we celebrate at Thanksgiving should not only be for the material riches of our lives but also for the human ones. After all, the bounty of living may not just be the abundance of goods spilling out of the cornucopia of life, but the richness of the relationships we have cultivated and harvested in our lifetime.

When we sit down to our feast of Thanksgiving this year, we should give thanks for that other family, that chosen family--our human harvest of enduring friendships. And they're easy to name, too. They're the ones who made a difference. "No love, no friendhsip," wrote Nobel Prize winner Francois Mauriac, "can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever."

I didn't know Jim was going to read this so I was caught off guard and it brought tears to my eyes. I am so thankful for all my family and friends.