Thank-full

I am thankful for a full week of giving thanks.

It was our first year to host Thanksgiving at the farm after celebrating the last 20 years in Carthage at Grandmommy’s house.

Change is hard.

Our family likes SAME. Same foods, same traditions, same, same, SAME. So all the different was a little scary.

But I think Justin said it best, “I’m thankful that traditions have more to do with who you’re with than where you are.”

It was a great week of family time and prep for the festivities.

And a beautiful, perfect Thanksgiving day for old and new traditions: the coronation of the Pumpkin Queen,

Pumpkin Olympics (with the addition of carefully curated hype music),

Chicken Dancing (with live chicken in hand), and an afternoon of feasting, fellowship, and football.

I had all my kids home for the first time in a very long time.

Our barn, our bellies, and our hearts were full.

Believe me, nothing is ever perfect, no matter how perfect the pictures might look. One of our cats was locked in the barn overnight, so Thanksgiving morning we woke to a pile of poop on our doormat and a spilled gallon of paint on the floor. We had a septic scare right before people started arriving, and Josh spent an hour running a hose to break up a clog. We had uninvited flies and bees at our gathering (we are in a barn after all). And one of my kids ate so much they puked.

And of course, there were beloved faces missing around our table.

But God.

These are the good old days.

Thanks for giving thanks with me.

“But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today.”(Hebrews 3:13a)

“Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.” (Psalms 100:4)

“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.” (Psalms 107:1)