Thanksgiving Day 2013

How was your Thanksgiving day?

Was it filled with peace and beauty and time to enjoy the gifts God has bestowed upon you?

Was it filled with the chaos and laughter of children?

Was it filled with grace and gratitude?

I sincerely hope that your day was all of those things and more. I can honestly tell you that ours was, even though we were not able to be away with extended family this year.

I can truly say that I could not have asked for anything more other than to have cousins and grandmothers and aunts and uncles here as well.

Dare I say it was perfect?

The day began like most days. I got up before anyone else and came into the kitchen. As I was steeping my tea, I set to starting the green beans and tidying things up and lighting our holiday candles and turning on the Celtic Christmas music on Pandora.

Once everything was just so, I sat down with my Bible, my journal, and my pen. There's no better way to start Thanksgiving than to study what God's word has to say about it and write that down!

I had not gotten very far before the girls came in, excited like it was Christmas morning. They were chomping at the bit to turn the music to Christmas music with words. I started playing Celtic and Classical Christmas music a few weeks ago, but I insisted that we wait to start the songs with words.

Since we were not able to travel to see extended family this year, we decided to do something new to make the day special and help to ease the sadness of not having cousins to play with all day. We actually went to get our Christmas tree Sunday evening (We have never gotten it before Thanksgiving). Daddy strung the lights on it Wednesday night so that it would be ready to decorate on Thanksgiving day.

We also have a Christmas box with all of the Christmas books that we own and the Christmas lovies (stuffed animals). We made the girls wait on that box until Thanksgiving morning as well.

All of this caused them to view the morning with the same anticipation as Christmas morning. They couldn't wait to start that "real" music and get into their Christmas goodies!

But, being the "mean Mommy" that I am, I said we couldn't do it without Daddy.

:-)

So, they had to (nicely) wake Daddy up and wait for him. While we waited, we grabbed our gratitude journals and wrote in them. I think I filled up an entire page this time!

Short story long, we started our morning by turning on the Christmas music with words and digging into our box of Christmas books and lovies.

 

We turned on the Macy's Day Parade and watched it here and there (muting the commercials ... trying to avoid all of the disgusting Black Friday nonsense). We had read the book about Tony Sarg two times already, so the girls were excited to see the balloons. I was a little frustrated at first because we couldn't see the parade and some of the performances were a bit against what I wanted for my children on Thanksgiving morning. But, eventually they began to actually show the parade and the balloons and floats and the high school marching bands. We like that stuff better!

Around 11:30 we all gathered for a special family breakfast of biscuits and gravy, which was delicious. Then, we headed into the living room and the Hippie passed out Thanksgiving goodie bags she had made for each of us and the girls spent some time going through the Christmas goodies.

From here, the day was just a nice, relaxing pace of football in the background and putting out Christmas decorations around the house, while packing up some of the normal decor to save until January. We opened all of our ornaments and remembered who got them for who and when. We read the annual scroll from the ornament that Daddy and I got the first year we were married. We drank organic egg nog with freshly grated nutmeg. And last, but not least ... we decorated our tree.

 

Once the tree and house were beautiful, Daddy and the girls headed outside to string lights around the house and yard while Momma set to work in the kitchen, making the rest of the feast. Daddy and the girls also enjoyed a game (or two) of horse football. Gotta love a Daddy that will run around the front yard on a stick horse for his girls!

 

After a beautiful prayer by each family member, we lit the first candle on our Advent wreath, had a wonderful dinner (and pumpkin cheesecake for dessert) and then tidied up the kitchen together. Daddy and the girls headed back outside for about 30 minutes to get in just a bit more light stringing ... and football playing. Finally, everyone settled inside and we watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and This is America, Charlie Brown: The Mayflower Voyagers together.

To end a perfect day, Momma and Daddy had some hot cocoa with peppermint schnapps.

How was your day?

Until next time,

~ Irie Momma