Giving Thanks

I guess I need to update my blog again, it has been awhile, and I have a feeling this will be a long one. So if anyone actually plans to read this I suggest some background music. I’m currently listening to “Short Trip Home” by Joshua Bell (a really nice combination of good bluegrass, and chamber music, and I really like Joshua Bell’s accessibility as an artist). We’ve been busy, but I suppose everyone is busy so that is no excuse, I guess I just haven’t felt inspired to write anything down lately.

We of course just celebrated a wonderful Thanksgiving, and we do have so much to be thankful for, this year, and in general. We live very blessed lives. I am so grateful for the many gifts I have in life. What a blessing it is to be alive and to be healthy and able to do the things I need to do. I’m so thankful for wonderful friends and family, and that I am daily surrounded by love, and affection. I’m thankful for my delightful son, and my wonderful husband that truly make each day joyful, and fun. I’m thankful for where I live, for the bounty that we enjoy, and for the standard of living that we have that is so much better than that of so many around the world. I am not ever unaware of the blessings I have, and the many things I have that so many don’t, but especially at this time of year my mind and my heart turn to those that have so little when I am blessed with so much. This year as I watched my family, and esp. my 4 year old celebrate a lovely holiday, I am deeply grateful that as a mother I have never had to look into my child’s eyes and seen them full of want, or fear. I’ve never seen him hungry, cold, or bruised by anything but hard playing. He’s always had a warm place to lay his head, and has never in his life known the kind of fear that many children live with everyday, fear for their own lives, for the lives of their parents, their family, and destruction of everything they know. I know there are thousands of people that wake up to that kind of fear everyday, and I know thousands of people get on their knees every night giving thanks for just having made it through the day. In this world that is often so very frightening I am so blessed to be able to raise a child protected from so many things, and I am truly, truly grateful for that amazing blessing. As I watch him grow up, I am so immensely grateful for having a been a child that knew the innocence of childhood, and for being able to raise a child in the same circumstances. My heart and prayers this week have been with those that don't always share the blessings I have but do gratefully share the love of a kind Heavenly Father that loves us all equally. This life is just a short journey until we again all share the blessing of heaven, and I am very thankful for those that came before me, and are so watchful of my life, and help blaze a trail that has allowed me the wonderful things that I have.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year, well actually we had a couple wonderful Thanksgivings this year. Last Monday (November 19) I was able to meet some old friends for lunch. My good friend Aaron who has been living in the Boston area was able to come home for Thanksgiving, and a bunch of us that used to have a standing lunch date ever week when we worked together at “Nick’s” a local dive, were able to get together again for a quick bite. It’s been about 3 years since we’ve all been in the same room and it was good to see everyone again. So many things have happened for all of us, marriages, children, divorces (unfortunately) and it's good to see everyone is not only surviving but thriving, and great to be reminded of some of the many wonderful people whose fellowship has blessed my life.

Tuesday was just a regular work day although I was able to sneak out a bit early to get some shopping done for Thanksgiving, and get home a bit early to start the long weekend, and to start some of the baking for the holiday.

I took Wednesday off as I normally do to give myself a 5 day weekend. I decided to try making a holiday dessert ranked on the “difficult” list this year for our Thanksgiving dessert, I like to try something different every year, especially when I can make some kind of dessert. I made a chocolate praline caramel tart, with a chocolate shortbread crust, and homemade chocolate pralines with a rum filling (rum flavoring in our case but I think I went a bit heavy on the rum flavoring none the less). Then it had a homemade caramel and bittersweet chocolate ganache sauces to pour over it. It was absolutely wonderful, easily the best dessert I have ever had, but I’m not sure I would make it again, it took a really long time. I also made chocolate chip cookie dough dip, pumpkin dip, a large cranberry cake with orange butter sauce, dill carrots and cooked 2 turkey breasts to get ready for the holiday. In the meantime Rob busied himself painting the main bathroom. We’ve lived in the house for almost 3 years and are finally getting to some decorating. We painted Jake’s room last weekend and Monday (blue of course which is Jake’s favorite color) and I wanted to extend the blue theme into the main bath. We will be doing the rest of the house in the upcoming months. Jake spent the day helping mom, and playing with friends. Overall a very busy day but we got a lot done.

Thanksgiving morning Jake and I got up early to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, a tradition we started when Jake was 2, and have done every year. As everyone knows the “real” Santa makes his yearly appearance in the Macy’s parade, and then disappears up to the North Pole to start making presents for Christmas. The parade is the kick off to Santa keeping the naughty/nice list so we watched the parade twice for good measure, just so Santa would get plenty of "nice" vibes from Jake all the way in New York (which is still of course closer than the North Pole). Jake loves all the cool balloons and was very impressed to see his favorite singer Corbin Bleu sing a Christmas song. After the parade we got ready to go to Grandma & Grandpa Dopp’s for Thanksgiving dinner. It was the year that most of the family went to their “other” families for Thanksgiving, so it was just us, Grandma & Grandpa, and Grandma Great , although Nikki and Clint had an early Thanksgiving so they were there as well. Jake was very happy to see Cade as he didn’t think he would have any cousins for Thanksgiving. We had a fabulous dinner with all the trimmings as always: artichoke dip , crab puffs, turkey, homemade stuffing, butterflake & dill rolls, potatos & turkey gravy, yams, cranberry jello, raspberry pretzel jello, jello cups (huh, 3 kinds of jello, are we from Utah?), pumpkin bread, banana bread, banana slush, pinapple grapefruit slush, and pina colada slush (slush is a family Thanksgiving tradition, going back to Grandma Hill). Then we had banana cream pie, Reese’s peanut butter pie, chocolate cream pie, pumpkin pie, pumpkin roll, and the desserts and dips that I had made for dessert. It was quite a bit of food for 9 people (well 10 people but at 4 months Austin doesn’t eat much). It did kind of seem like a Thanksgiving warm up instead of the actual holiday with so few people, but it was very nice.

After dinner, Nikki and Clint had planned to go to the movie with Clint’s family to see Enchanted. They nicely offered to let Jake tag along, and he willing climbed right into their car thinking that Nikki hadn’t even talk to his mom, and that they were kidnapping him. I’m hoping that he only thinks it’s a good idea to get into a car without talking to mommy when it’s Aunt Nikki, but we probably should work on that. Mom, Dad, Rob, Grandma Great, and myself settled in and watched Evan Almighty, and let the food digest.

At about 6:30, Rob left to go pick up Josh and Camille who were in town for the holiday, and then Jake and I joined them when Jake got back from the movie. We had some turkey that I had made for a late night supper, although no one was really hungry after the big Thanksgiving meals. We spent the evening catching up with Josh and Camille, and it was good to see them, Jake was really happy to see his brother and sister.

I got up at 3:30 Friday morning because I am apparently unstable and thought it would be a good idea to go catch some Black Friday sales and go “talk to Santa”. In the midst of all the insanity I was able to get some pretty good deals and was done and back home by 6:30 a.m. to a houseful of sleeping people that didn’t even know I had left. Rob, and Jake got up around 7:00, and I couldn’t go back to sleep so I got up about 7:30, and Rob fixed a nice breakfast of omelets, bacon, and juice for everyone as they got up. I made some pepperoni rolls, and buffalo chicken dip for lunch and for Thanksgiving part II while Rob did breakfast. Then Rob decided to take all the kids to the movie, and I was going to stay home and rest and make lunch. He took them to see Fred Claus, and Jake thought it was quite fun to be able to plop himself down right in the middle of his brother and sister for the movie. They all got home about 2:00 and we had a lunch of chicken alfredo, caesar salad, and pepperoni rolls (I figured everyone was having another thanksgiving in the evening so we would be sick of Turkey). Then the kids had to leave to go have Thanksgiving with their other grandmothers, and we all headed to mom and dad’s for Turkey Dinner part II. Jake was very happy to see all his cousins at this version, and all the food was just as good on day two.

Saturday I told Jake was going to be our official “do nothing day”. “Do nothing day” is one of mommy’s favorite days, we lay around in our p.j.’s until all hours, play some games, eat leftovers, and Jake watches movies while mommy and daddy get to “do nothing”. Apparently Jakes not such a big fan of “do nothing day” as he told me he much prefers “do lots of fun stuff day”. Daddy actually ended up going over to Jeremy and Jenny’s to watch the BYU/Utah game with the guys, and Aunt Circe nicely called to invite Jake to go with her to the park. It looked like Circe had done some kid trading dropping Golda and Ruby off at Ryan and Jennies, and picking up Colin and Jackson, and she had dropped Ari off with Sarah and had Sarah’s little boy. So she was taking Freestone, Jake, Xanthe, Colin, Jackson, and Henry (I think that is the right name) to the park. I’m no genius, but um, I’m not sure Circe ended up with the really good end of that deal. I on the other hand enjoyed some quiet time, on my “do nothing day” and Jake got to do something fun, which worked out great. Jake came home from Circe’s and went right to sleep. Thanks again to Circe for including Jake in on the fun.

Sunday, we had a nice quiet morning. We have made a new goal to try not to watch T.V. on Sunday mornings before church, although we do turn in on in the evenings after church. We should really make a goal to turn it off all day as it really is nice, and even though Jake plays a lot and really doesn’t watch too much T.V. it’s probably on more than it should be. We put on our favorite music station (in our case “singers and standards” which plays Bing Crosby, Billie Holiday, Michael Buble, Frank Sinatra, etc.) and had a really nice morning. Jake played in his room with his toys, and Rob and I were able to sit in the room and have a really nice talk, plus my co-teacher at church had called late Saturday night that she wouldn’t be at church and I had a lesson to prepare. I generally like to read my lesson Sunday night a week in advance so I have the week to think about it, and watch for things that happen during the week that relate to the lesson, and that the kids will also relate to, but it worked out o.k. doing it Sunday. I was able to find a blog of someone that teaches the Gospel Doctrine class (they are a week ahead of us) and he blogs his lesson material every week, so I used some of the materal and quotes that he had prepared. I’m not sure why I worry about not having enough material so much, the kids are great to talk about stuff every week, and we generally don’t even make it through the material I have prepared in 40 minutes, but I guess like when I cook, I’m always afraid I don’t have enough. I took a bowl of leftover chocolate chip cookie dough dip to share with the class and it’s a good thing I took plenty. Turns out none of the Sunday School teachers for the young men and young women showed up, so I had the 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17 year olds all in my class. Luckily we don’t have a large young men/young women, but it was still a pretty large group. We came home from church and just got right into our p.j’s early to unwind for the new week, and then we watched Christmas Story and Christmas Carol, two of Jake’s favorite Christmas movies before we all went to bed.

So we had a wonderful Thanksgiving and are now officially headed off into the Christmas Season, and back to our daily routine. I came to work to the fabulous news that my dear friend Krissy, who has struggled for many years to have a baby, had her little one early this morning. It's a beautiful baby boy, and I know how loved and wanted he is, and am so happy to hear that he is here safe and sound and in the arms of his mommy that has waited so long for him. What a wonderful way to round up a very happy Thanksgiving!!!

Hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday, and we are super thankful once again for all our wonderful blessings.