Thanksgiving

It is time for another Thanksgiving.  That's the American Thanksgiving, from pilgrims to turkey to a pre-Christmas holiday with families.  Even though I really don't get into it as much as a lot of people here, it is still a nice break for me from the ordinary, a chance to relax and visit family and friends.  When we lived in the Cities I always had to work Friday after Thanksgiving so we would always spend the day on Thursday with Ehren's aunt Grace and her family.  Somehow since then it became an unwritten tradition for us to spend Thanksgiving with the Meyers and we really enjoy it.  I was really upset when Ehren found out he had to work on Friday after Thanksgiving this year but since then he was able to switch with someone and we're good to go again.  :) When we moved up here I thought it would be so easy to get down to the cities and visit friends, family but it is far from easy.  We are lucky to get down 3 times a year now and so I want to hold on to our Thanksgiving tradition of going to the Cities because it is one more time we get to go down there.

In the light of Thanksgiving and pilgrims and all, Kade's teacher asked me to come talk to the whole class tomorrow about how I moved to the US and about my country, Slovakia.  When I asked her for some examples she said last year they had a lady come talk about her move from Cuba, how she traveled on a boat across the ocean and the hardship of living in Cuba and stuff.  I had to laugh to myself when I read that because come on, how is my story anything even comparable to that?  It's not like I was running away from a bad or poor place, if anything the first year in the US I wished I never left home. :)  So we'll see what the kids think of my sappy love story ending with me moving to the US.  Kade is really excited that I'm going to be the guest speaker in his class because I very rarely get to volunteer or help in any way since I have to do daycare.

One thing I've been wanting our family to do for Thanksgiving is to make our own little "thankful tree".  I found some nice red branches in our woods and cut out little notes out of scrapbook paper.  As part of our "Tuesday family supper" this week we all thought about all the things we are thankful for, wrote them down and hung them on our tree.  It is just sad when I think about thousands of things in my life I am thankful for and how quickly I forget about them when something just doesn't go the way I want it to.  I've been so spoiled that stupid trivial things that don't matter at all can ruin my day sometimes.  So I want to read and remember all those notes my kids wrote (despite some notes mentioning toys and their favorite things) and the ones I wrote because in the end, they are what matter in this life.  What I have right here and not the millions of things our society is telling me I need.  It is so easy to get sucked in, to compare our life with lives of others, to make sure we're not behind on anything and most importantly to make sure our kids are not lagging behind on any area of life.  So here is to a year of thankfulness.  To finding little joys every day and treasuring them.  To laughing and smiling instead of frowning. And to contentment and peace that's not of this world.  

     

(little Marcel :))
I'm bummed I missed Kade's music performance at
school but they sounded good on the video I saw