Showing posts with label Thanksgiving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thanksgiving. Show all posts

Thursday, November 28, 2013

The First Thanksgiving

My oldest son's favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. So here we are, Thanksgiving 2013. Our first Thanksgiving as a family. We celebrated differently than I would have thought. We didn't have a huge dinner with lots of friends and family. Instead, we celebrated with just the five of us. We had a pretty good menu:

Turkey - big hit
Mashed potatoes - the kids avoided them like the plague
Stuffing - see mashed potatoes
Cranberries - enjoyable
Rolls - our daughter ate two
Corn - delicious
Sweet potatoes - our sons ate seconds
Sparkling cider - aka apple soda
Cheesecake - YUMMO! 

We had a good meal together, and the kids were excited, and it was a great time to reflect on how thankful we are to have them in our lives. 


Thursday, November 22, 2012

Thanksgiving

Flashback to Thanksgiving 2010...
We had recently lost our first pregnancy, my grandma was diagnosed with cancer, so I flew home for her surgery, and my husband's grandpa died while we were visiting. It was pretty hard to find something to be thankful for. I was pretty angry, depressed, and hopeless. A friend came over during Thanksgiving break to tell me that my time for grief was up. I was supposed to be moving forward. How could I move forward when every time I was almost at a good place again, someone else died? She brought her Bible, and read verses that condemned my attitude and grief. And that was the end of our friendship. Honestly. Although we still saw each other, it was just the beginning of the end. I spent Thanksgiving quietly at home with my husband and a friend, and I truly felt I had nothing to be thankful for. Little did I know that in the next three months we would lose another baby and my stepfather.

Thanksgiving 2011
We had just moved to a new state, started new jobs, and had become foster parents a few days earlier. We were thankful for the opportunity to parent. We set up Christmas decorations with a 4 year old (what a crazy adventure!). We drank hot cocoa, hoped for snow, and spent a lot of hours sleeping on his floor so he wouldn't be scared at night. I definitely felt like things were looking up, and I felt thankful for the changes that had moved us out of our comfort zones on every level.

Thanksgiving 2012
I can barely begin to think about everything I am thankful for without tearing up. This last year has not been a picnic, but I feel so blessed to have found my forever family! I just knew it from the moment I saw them online! They will be our children forever. What more can I say? It is the biggest blessing I have ever received. Thanks are definitely in order.