Thanks

This year I did a cheesy preschool/elementary art project with Travis for Thanksgiving. We made a "thankful tree" and used, you guessed it, the ol' trace your hand with crayon trick to fill our tree with some lovely leaves.  I admit that I colored in most of the leaves.  Travis was helping, but since I had already cut some of the hands out, he kept tearing them and it caused him great distress.  So I let him color on the paper before I traced on our hand templates and then finished up the job to make it more colorful.  He gave me all his thankful answers on his own (after I first explained what thankful was and then gave him an example of what I was thankful for).  One of my favorites is "eating popcorn with dad"- so honest and sweet that it really does give him that much pleasure.  We traced everyone's hands; I ad-libbed for Chase- though I'm pretty sure he really is thankful for his crib, food, his woogie, and his family.  And I even saved one hand of everyone's for memories sake.  I find it quite interesting that since the paper I was using comes on a roll, it naturally rolls back to one side and lo and behold of the final hands I kept, mine and Chase's roll to be right hands and Chris and T's roll to be left hands.  The hands we each most often use.  Just weird!

We spent our first Thanksgiving away as a family this year.  We went to Mobile, AL to visit with Chris' brother and his wife and had a great time.  We only had two mishaps on our part- Chase broke a ceramic dog bowl and Travis broke a Hallmark ornament (dismembered him really) and we only lost 2 toys to Charlie the gigantic but sweet yellow lab.  Way too much food was made and eaten and left over.  Perfect Thanksgiving.  And of our entire visit, the only pictures I have are a few of the USS Alabama- which we got to visit on Thanksgiving Day.  Not a single picture of Donny and Meredith.  Not a single picture of me.  At least I know I was there too ;)  Travis loved the battleship and historic airplanes.  I say historic because I'm assuming they were as old as the battleship; I was all toured out at that point and so was Meredith.  Carrying a small child up and down ship ladders is actually a lot of work.  I'm grateful Chris was carrying Chase almost the entire time- I don't think I would have made it otherwise.  So us ladies sat on a bench enjoying the bay breeze while the boys went to check out the planes and a submarine.

Yes, I'm thankful for our troops- past and present.  Especially past; I feel like America has no sense of patriotism now, no pride of self.  I'm also very thankful that my husband isn't one of them, though he would excel at it.  I can't even imagine a life without him in it so I count myself lucky everyday that he comes home to us every night.