What I learned from my first time hosting Thanksgiving

First off, let me say that I love Thanksgiving.  I love getting together with family to eat.  I love taking some time to just think about how much God blesses us each and every day.  Some days it is hard to see the blessings when we focus on the trials, but when we look back, we see that God never leaves us.

In honor of our big move to our new house, we invited David's family to come visit.  So, on Wednesday, David's parents and his brother's family arrived for a 3 day whirlwind of food, laughing, long walks, Wii challenges, Black Friday shopping, and just plain old being together.

Before this week I had never hosted Thanksgiving.  I love to cook, and I really do like to have people over to eat, it just hasn't ever worked out, so I was pretty excited.  And now that everyone is gone and my kids are so tired that they are melting down at the drop of a hat, I can say that we had a successful Thanksgiving.

Here are some things I learned:

1.  Real family still come even though you are having a flea "issue" at your house.  I won't go into details, but when Tee Dog died, she left us a little present.  Thankfully, our family is willing to put up with this madness.

2.  Every kid loves bunk beds.  David's parents brought down his old bed for Noel to have, and he and Elise are in heaven playing with it and sleeping in it.

3.  Black Friday sales are not as mean and intimidating as I dreamed they would be.  But I didn't find any super-crazy good deals either, so it was more of a fun experience than anything else.

4.  I am learning to be more comfortable with who I am around my in-laws.  They are wonderful people, and sometimes that can be intimidating to me. I want them to be pleased with me, but I have also learned that their acceptance isn't what I live for.

5.  Buying a smoked turkey from the local meat market was a great decision!  They cook it for you, and you just have to heat it up!!  The only problem was no drippings to make gravy.  But we ended up stealing gravy from the church, so it all worked out.  (Don't ask, I don't want to get arrested).

6.  There truly are tons of giving, loving, caring people out there.  When I went to deliver meals to the needy Wednesday night, I met a whole group of people who had worked all day to help make Thanksgiving meals for hundreds of people in Kokomo who would have probably been home alone or without food.  I can get on a roll talking all negative about my town, but there really are some amazing people here.

7.  The best gifts in life are memories made with those you love.  And we made plenty of those.

I hope you spent some time being thankful this season, but that it doesn't end here.  Be thankful every day.  Every.  Day.

May His blessings be evident to us always.

All of my political thoughts in one blog post. And then I'm done.

Okay, for the record, I have been terrible about blogging because ever since we have moved our internet is really sketchy.  It works about 20% of the time, so I have very limited availability.  I hate complaining about silly things like my internet access, but I did want to give a little excuse for my lack of words on this blog (not in real life.  I'm never at a lack of words in real life).

My vote didn't count.

Really.

Because I didn't vote for Obama or Romney.

I wrote Ron Paul's name in.

Not because I thought it would make a difference or because it was a joke, but because I could not, in good conscience, vote for either presidential candidate.  I pretty much just voted so I could vote on local/state officials.

And it made me sad.

Sad that those two men are the best our entire country could come up with to lead our government.

And then I listened to a program on the radio today (because I'm 75 and listen to talk radio when I'm alone in the car) that talked about how hardly anybody wants to get into politics anymore these days because of the smear campaigns and the fundraising and the red tape.

And that made me even sadder.

I wish things could be different with the way elections are run and who wants to be in politics, but I also know that if each of us took the same energy we have been using during these last few weeks to make the world a better place by loving more, serving more, and complaining less, this world would be a much better place, regardless of who the president is.

When I'm feeling selfish

Yesterday was a bad day.

Bad because I practically ruined it by being selfish.

I had been busy doing things for other people the whole day.  And instead of feeling the joy of being able to give, I resented the fact that nobody had "done anything for me" in a long time.

I know, I know, I'm just bursting with juvenile behavior.

And then, Elise got sick.

She spiked a pretty high fever, and I ended up staying with her most of the night as she fought through some illness we now know is some sort of virus.

I'm just going to be honest:  it sucked.

But it also brought my attitude back in perspective.

I realized that my life is not my life.  It is about giving of myself, especially as a mother.  And while I would have rather been doing a lot of other things than cleaning up barf, I count it a privilege that I am a mother.  That I have these beautiful children God has given to David and me.  And although I am still bummed about missing our date night (2nd attempt thwarted!), I am reminded that life is so fragile and fleeting.  I can spend my time wishing for something different, or I can embrace every moment given me.

How will you spend the moments given to you?