Give Thanks

Thanksgiving is a funny time.

It's a time when people rush around the store, and then spend all morning preparing a huge meal.  Family gathers, all the nice china, silver, and crystal comes out.  In my family, we always went to my grandparents' house, where my Grandma had been cooking all morning.  Always on the menu:  Turkey, mashed potatoes with turkey gravy, stuffing (cooked in the turkey--there's nothing better),  sweet potato casserole, corn casserole, green beans, pea salad... I'm sure I'm missing a few items.  And then dessert.  Pies, bars, and cookies.  


This year, Alex is in his 3rd year of seminary school so we are temporarily living in Texas, away from our families.  It's the first time either of us has ever spent Thanksgiving away from family.  The past few years, we spent it with either my family or his, but we've never had a Just-Us Thanksgiving.  So, since it was Amelia's first, we decided to have our own.  


We cooked our first Thanksgiving week's-worth-of-food dinner.   

The leftovers better last us nearly a week, since the groceries cost about that much!  Our turkey was already cooked for us, by the amazing Chicken Ministry men at our church.  They spent all night last Saturday night camped outside the church smoking turkeys.  So all we had to do was heat up our delicious bird and cook our sides.  A few recipes from my fam, a few from his, and we were good to go. 


We set the table with as close-to-matching plates as we could, pulled out our beautiful silverware (from my Grandma)  and had ourselves a feast.

We pretty much have one or two of every type of plate imaginable.

There were actually two more dishes than this, but somehow they didn't make the photo.

Yep, this was the first dish to get polished off---by me.

But even if everything burned, or dried out, or didn't set-up properly, I realized I didn't care a bit.  It was so much fun to have the parade on the TV, Amelia playing with toys on the floor, and the two of us swapping out between kitchen-duty and baby-duty.  We love cooking together, and make a pretty good team.  Amelia feasted right along with us-- from a jar of Vegetable Turkey Dinner.  

MMMmmm... Pureed meat.

And that's what I have to be thankful for.  The fact that it never really matters how it all comes out.  What matters is family--the near kind, the far kind, the not-officially-family-but-may-as-well-be kind.  What matters is that we have the opportunity to be together and give thanks, and that we can do that every day.  There's so much to be thankful for.  Writing it out in a list isn't the important part--Giving thanks is.  So just do it.  Give thanks.