Turkey Day and my little Turkey Head

Did you know that Thanksgiving is my very favorite holiday?  It is.

On an unrelated note, here are some things I have found myself saying recently.  Motherhood is full of unexpected moments.

"Oh, we don't eat cheese out of the trash."
"Guess what! We don't play with our dirty diapers."
"We have to get you dressed.  In fact, you have to get dressed pretty much every. single. day."
"There is no reason to holler right now."
"We don't poop in the tub at our house."

I'm not sure why I choose to use the inclusive pronoun so often...

Anyway, back to Thanksgiving.  I love football.  I love food.  I love family.  I have a special love for mashed potatoes and gravy.  In fact, I can't think of anything not to love about Thanksgiving.  I plan to spend the day after Thanksgiving listening to the Christmas music station I have perfected on Pandora and trying to find enough flat surfaces in my house that are out of reach of chubby fingers to place all my nativity scenes, which I will promptly segregate. 

I am so grateful for the swamp of blessings I am fortunate enough to live with every day.  I am drenched with wonderful things for which I cannot take any credit-- blessings of the temporal sort, the spiritual sort, and the sort that stumble around in diapers with graham cracker crumbs stuck to round cheeks.

Recently, I've had a few of those truly valuable experiences that prick my heart with guilt.  I see others awash in grief, and the small pangs I can borrow from them remind me to open my lens and widen my perspective.  Less eloquently, what I am trying to say is that I have been reminded to put up and shut up, because my life just really isn't all that bad.

In fact, it's pretty stinking incredible.

And here's the big moment you've been waiting for-- the part where I attempt to tie all of these random thoughts together:

There is nothing I am more grateful for than the blessing of crawling into the arms of my love at night and giggling together about the fact that we had to remind our daughter not to suck on the vacuum cord.  Repeatedly.  And this is forever. 

Thanksgiving, indeed.