Giving Thanks

This Thanksgiving was really fun. I hope you all had a great Turkey day and got to reflect on the things that you are thankful for in your lives. We spent the day at my moms house and had a meal that was of course over the top and truly delicious. Jim's parents and brother were in from California and his sister was in from Seattle. My sister and her new husband were there as well. Not quite as big as a group as last year, but still plenty of family around to make sure Bekah always had a tea party partner.
This year as a lot of you know, I have really tried to get mine and my family's history down. I want to make sure my kids have written down memories and I want to get to know the people who are still here, before it's too late. I'm not sure why it is such a strong motivation, perhaps it's because my father died last year, and even though we had a falling out, and we weren't close when he passed away, I don't know that much about his life. Which means my children, when they want to know about my father, will know very little. I will only have the few foggy memories of my childhood and a very few of the little stories that my dad would tell to us on rare occasions. I want to make sure that I take advantage of the time I have with family members and get what I can from them, so that these memories and stories will last for generations.
The point of all this is that for Thanksgiving this year I started what I hope will be a little tradition in our family. I got a picture of everyone at Thanksgiving this year, and I made everyone a place card for dinner. Inside the card was a place for everyone to write specific things they were thankful for this year and a place for their pictures. I put them all together and next Thanksgiving we can pull them out and see how we change each year. How our perspective changes, and what is important to us changes. I also made a beautiful memory jar for Jims parents because they have nothing written down. Their children don't know much about them and I know nothing about them having only been in their family for just a couple years. They are not young and my hope is that they get to write down some of these memories for us to read after they are gone. We had fun just listening to their answers as they pulled out a few of the questions from the jar. In just those few moments we all learned that Jim's mom Betty, doesn't like her name and wishes it would have been something like Elizabeth, and that they have never been in a snowstorm since they have been married for the past 60 years. I really hope they will write some of this down, and I hope that you all write down your memories as well and keep them in a safe place. Your children and grandchildren will thank you for it. So I just want to give thanks that I am still alive and that I am able to know all of you, and that you are all part of my memories that make my life so blessed. Thank you!