Thankfulness

Since Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, (something about all that food, gratefulness and family just makes my year) I decided to participate in the I heart faces: Thankfulness (www.iheartfaces.blogspot.com).

       In our family, we have a tradition of writing on the same white table cloth each year what we are thankful for. For the past four years, we have written what we were thankful for and allowed our daughters to "write" or "stamp" their footprint on the cloth. Since we are a military family, and generally far from our parents, we have friends and single coworkers join in our feast and they each leave their mark on our white table cloth.
      Each year, as I set the table, we look over the cloth and remember the years prior and why we were so thankful for our "healthy baby" (preterm labor and delivery) or who we ate that meal with ("for friends who treat you like family"). This year, the table cloth will travel with me and the girls to my husband's family since he won't be able to eat this meal with us. As sad as I am that I won't have his thankful mark our table cloth for this year, I'm still thankful to have him with us. So, my picture is from our latest homecoming with Ryan.



I'm thankful that my husband has come home, and will come home. I'm thankful to have a house for him to come home to, a family that fills that house with so much love that it becomes a home and a man who loves me, our girls, and this country enough to leave when duty calls. And I am thankful that God has blessed me with some amazing friends who are more like family. Before I started this nomadic journey with my husband, I wasn't a best friend kind of person. I never really needed friends, and now I understand that without my friends, this world and this life would be much harder.I have so much to be thankful for, and love that I can spend an ENTIRE MONTH of the year recognizing those blessings!