Hope and a Purpose: holidays

Christmas is all about traditions for me. Both old and new. This one is an old one but a great one. Black Friday morning....our supplies: holiday binder, ads and snacks. Stop by starbucks and we hit the road (sadly, we found that our starbucks didn't open until 5;30 what were they thinking?!!

Jessy and I got to spend a whole half day together :o) (exactly 12 hours ironically). It is highly unusual for us to have such a huge chunck of time to be alone and just enjoy our "adult" relationship that we are nurturing.
We got to wait in line and shop, found starbucks closed ;O(
wait in another line and shop, then shop and shop and shop, go out to eat ;O) shop, shop,shop ok you get the idea, it was a great day!

This was such a different but wonderful thanksgiving. After much prayer and struggling I decided to not help with the community thanksgiving meals this year. I have been doing this since Jessy was in first grade, it is just part of Thanksgiving for us. My "job" is to be in charge of the dressing and coleslaw. Not a huge endeavor unless you are preparing for 8,000 meals! I truly love doing it. It can be a struggle (keeping the littles occupied while waiting for daddy or grandma to take them for a while) accompanied with the physical exhaustion of being on your feet working those crazy long hours Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Never has a year gone by when God has not brought someone to me just when I really needed them. He is so faithful. Hopefully, you can feel my passion for this program and understand why this decision was so difficult. I called my dear Bucky, she heads up the program, what an incredible, beautiful, on fire for the Lord women, and explained my decision. Instead of being frustrated with me, she talked and prayed with me and told me how much she loves me :o). I am blessed.

The decision to take a year off freed me to really focus on my family this week. We snuggled on the couch, read great books, spent a whole day baking together, and really focused on what thanksgiving, giving thanks to God, for all things and circumstances, really means. The timing was God's because the kids and I really needed this time and focus more than I had even realized.
I got up early Thursday morning and was not exhausted.
Not that the exhaustion of helping others is not worth it, it is, but this was such a different beginning to most Thanksgiving mornings I wanted to note it. Because we had been able to prepare our food and desserts ahead of time, we got to watch most of the Macy's thanksgiving parade. I had been missing this for years, or so I thought. I made the sad realization that it seems to be 70% commercials, 20% singing and dancing and very few floats. Guess I really hadn't missed out on as much as I thought :o)

We spent the day at my sister, Deb's house, it was so relaxing. My mom and dad were there and my nephew Lucas, whom I hadn't seen in years, joined us for a while that evening. The kids had so much fun together. Here are Brily and Haven with two of my nieces, Grace and Miranda.