Bellies are stuffed.  Babies are sleeping.  Food has been put away.  Another Thanksgiving come and gone.

All day long we hear what everyone is thankful for, and soon it can sound like an obligatory list – health, home, family, friends, food.  The same things we are grateful for every year.  Why we need a special day to remember all of this, I don’t know.  But there is something about sitting around a table of friends or family that reminds us that there is so much more good in the world than bad.  So much to celebrate.

Today and always. But since today is the day for it…….

I’m grateful for my often messy but cozy home.

for time to be with my son in the most mundane of activities to stay home with him, to not miss a minute of this crazy-fast journey.

for my family, which often seems insane, but then I remember that everyone claims that one.  We are all derived from the crazy, it seems.  But my crazies?  I love them.

for my husband who loves me and loves our Jude so so much.

for an amazing year that finds me in a very different frame of mind than I was 12 months ago.  A happy place that has come gradually, and I love that.

for food and conversation and nice china and warm candles and table linens and all those things we should do more often.

for the health of my own able body and the bodies of those I love.

for a warm, active, curious little man with the sweetest blue eyes I have ever seen and the uncanny ability to teach me how to “get it” in a way I never have before.

for this little journal, this thing called blog.  It’s illuminated some beauty in my days that I might not have noticed before and connected me with friends old and new.

for you, reader.  If I know you in our real world, I thank you for our friendship.  If I know you through this lens, I thank you for our friendship as well.  Your comments and emails mean so much, and I love that this scary-huge world can seem a lot smaller through the computer screen.

 

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It was a happy holiday with cousin time, family talk, and more food than you could imagine – which of course I ate before I could photograph.

 

John Milton once wrote, “Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.” And I, for one, agree.  So happy Thanksgiving, friend.  Take a deep breath and think of what you have – the small pleasures and the big things.  The world is a wonderful place, in part because we all look for the wonder.  So be happy, reader. Life is good.