Being thankful

Thanksgiving was a whirlwind around here. We started early by lazing around in our pajamas and watching the Thanksgiving Day parades. My mother always enjoyed parades and I harbor some pretty fond memories of exclaiming over floats ranging from beautiful to down right bizarre. For a while when I was a kid we knew one of the clowns in the Detroit parade and would watch for her when they walked by. We knew the Santa Claus, too, which never struck me as odd—Santa happens to sit next to my parents at the football games every fall, what of it?

We had Thanksgiving brunch with Jon's family this year. That's something we've never done before, but a tradition I might wholeheartedly recommend, since it kept our meal consumption down to just two for the day, albeit it two large ones. We arrived with homemade bagels and pumpkin cupcakes and Calvin went right to work with their juicer. You haven't lived until you've had Calvin's cranberry, orange, banana, something else Thanksgiving brunch surprise, let me tell you.

Brunch, lunch, dinner, it doesn't matter—the warmth of time spent with family, of hugs and of laughter, is what really defines Thanksgiving.

The late afternoon took us to my parents' house, where we put our pumpkin pie and cranberry relish to good service alongside a phenomenal smoked turkey (it's a three day process, I hear), and sundry other delectables. Food, to me, is another part of the definition of this holiday, and being able to contribute adds to the experience.

And what would Thanksgiving be without a little after dinner sewing challenge? We were, every single one of us, charmed into it by the three year old zipping around the table where we sat being too stuffed to move.

It's a grand life filled with love, and for that I am thankful.