Being thankful

I have always loved Thanksgiving.  I love gathering my family around our table for a huge feast of turkey, rolls, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and my grandma's broccoli salad. I love eating creamy pumpkin pie with a steaming cup of caramel apple cider or hot chocolate.

This year I made a banner of brown, green, orange, and yellow leaves that hangs in our front room to remind us of the things we're grateful for.  Whenever we feel like it, we write something we're grateful for on a paper leaf and add it to the banner.  The kids love it and I feel like it's helping all of us focus on what really matters this time of year.

My visiting teacher brought me a message of thanksgiving this month.  She read a quote from Abraham Lincoln.  Did you know Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a National holiday?  I wasn't taught that in school.  I was only taught that Indians and Pilgrims ate a feast together and we celebrate that each year with a feast of our own.  Anyway, I wanted to share some of Lincoln's message about Thanksgiving.  He said, "The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.  I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. "

As I read this I realized that sometimes I get too caught up in the excitement of having the kids home from school, eating yummy food, and getting ready for Christmas.  I need to remember the many blessings provided to me from a loving Father in Heaven.