Thanks-Giving

I just realized that I’d better post a few pictures from our fun Thanksgiving celebration before it fades into the Christmas festivities! How grateful we are for our bounteous blessings, most especially our terrific family!  Thanks to Saren who took pictures and Ashton who posted them on her blog I actually have some pictures to share.I only took two pictures. Thanksgiving Dinner is pretty time consuming!

Because we had almost everybody home for the wedding, our only family who lives close enough to drive came “Over the River and Through the Woods”  for some great times, good food and a lot of fun in the snow.

In addition my darling sister Lenna came with three of their terrific kids and their kids and our beloved Mexican neighbors with their little girls, and their cousins and their little boy came to add up to 34 of us enjoying a great day of Thanksgiving together!

As soon as the cousins walked in the door they started adding to the Thankful list as they rolled out adding machine paper by the yard filled with things they were thankful for. There was a contest between the kids and the adults and as you might guess, the adults won. Part of the reason is that the adults were busy preparing the food! Grandfather tapped the lists together and hung it above our Thanksgiving table for decoration! We ended up with about 800 things that we are thankful for!

 

WE had a girls’ table and a boys table…..

And an adult table where we played a fun Thanksgiving game. Everyone had to name three things they were most grateful for that was unique enough that no one at the table would duplicate it. We had several winners and it was fun to hear from this grateful crew!

After dinner we had a little impromptu concert where we had Saren and Eliza playing violins, Lenna playing piano with me on the violin, Cole surprising us with a violin solo and Ashton who played some beautiful stuff on the guitar!

Is this teenager cute enough? 

Even though the snow was melting, the kids had a ball out on the sleighs!

It was a Thanksgiving to remember especially since we just released our new book called The Thankful Heart. Even though it advocates specific ways to be thankful every month of the year, it is especially meaningful in November. It is a delightful book for us as the photography is mostly done by our children and our Bulgarian almost-daughter Eva Timothy. It also includes our Thanksgiving Cards from the past 40 years. Since thanksgiving is our favorite holiday, we always send a Thanksgiving Card instead of a Christmas Card. The pictures through the years are pretty funny but the poems written by Richard every the year are still beautiful and poignant!

Richard says, “Gratitude does not lead to happiness, Gratitude is happiness in it’s most attainable form.”

You can take a look inside the book by double clicking on the book cover here.

 

We are thankful to so many of you who take a look at this blog occasionally even though I’m really doing it for the sake of our Family History. We are so grateful for the good you are doing in your own realms!

And on to Christmas!!!