Thankfulness

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. While our children and Albert are upstairs, re-arranging bedrooms, again (yes, I know it's midnight) I took a few minutes to reflect on the things I am so thankful for this year. Every year. At dinner this evening, I will encourage each of our children, or at least the ones who can formulate a half way intelligible answer, to do the same thing. Right now, as I look at Jackson and Brice, asleep here in the living room, I'm grateful for the simplicity of the evening. For the time here with them. For their health, for their happiness, and for the happiness they bring me. My babies are all asleep in their bedrooms, and I am thankful for the way their tiny hands feel curled around my own. I am thankful for the complete and total way they love me and for their innocent neediness ever present loyalty. The way that they laugh and play and listen to a story when I read to them (which we've begun doing quite frequently). My older children are moving beds and dressers upstairs right now and I'm thankful...thankful that so far they haven't woken up Mia, thankful for the wonderful young men they are each shaping up to be, thankful for the close relationship I've been fortunate to cultivate with each of them, thankful for the conversations we share and moments we spend together- as I know full well, that my years for enjoying these limitless opportunities for long conversation are fleeting- they will grow up and move away and start their own lives- in the not so distant future. I am thankful for the chance to raise them, and love them. My hubby is also upstairs moving furniture. I am thankful for his persistent and constant love, for the fact that while love can be fragile and delicate, it can also be strong, durable and can withstand a lot. I'm thankful that I am married to someone who is still madly in love with me after fifteen years of marriage, and tells me so each and every day. I'm thankful for him.
I am thankful that God has continued to provide for our family. I am thankful to God for blessing me with these exact eleven people. I'm thankful that He has blessed us with health and happiness.
Family. Health. Happiness. Babies. Amazing young men. We couldn't be any more blessed.