The Thanksgiving Holidays - A Mega-Post

I am thankful for my wonderful daughters and my husband.

I am also thankful that I had this whole week off of work to be Mommy, although it is getting hard to know that our island of time together is coming to its end, in the sense that we must all go back to our respective schools on Monday. Just the weekend left and it has gone very, very fast! Still, I am thankful.

On Monday of the week, the girls collected acorns from our neighbor's yard (we have a standing invitation) in the Lone Star Baby's little bucket and made little twig-and-acorn wreaths to hang on tree and bush for the squirrels. We talked with the Lone Star Baby about how it will be getting cold soon (theoretically) and we need to take care of the animals. The next day they painted pine cones with peanut butter and rolled them in birdseed and hung them also from tree and bush for the birds. It was so sweet to watch them. It may not be truly useful to the little critters but I think it helps the Lone Star Baby develop a sense of stewardship and so is worthwhile.

On Thanksgiving, I cooked a bunch of food and we took it over to the house of another Quaker family who invited us and had a lovely meal, although the Lone Star Baby was in a sulky mood. I miss the Dallas family we did not go visit this year, but I love spending holidays with this family as well. We have lively discussions about things like police brutality and all sorts of pressing issues.

And now it is on to Christmas! Tonight we decorated our "tree" and all about the living room for the holiday season so our busy lives will not be able to delay us later. The Lone Star Baby was delighted to be hanging stuff on the tree like a Big Girl and the Lone Star Girl wore a Santa hat and Christmas apron and sang Star Trek Christmas carols of her own devising. I am excited about starting the yearly trek of our little Magi down the vast hallway to the Bethlehem bookshelf and reading our nightly story bit from the Advent calendar and doing Christmas crafts and such once December creeps in later next week. There are no objects, besides the children's photographs, I guess, more precious to me than the rather large myriad of Christmas ornaments hand-made by the Lone Star Girl over the years with a few additions starting to come in from her baby sister. I love to see our tree all hodge-podge full of them.

I am truly thankful.