Thankful

This Thanksgiving season gave us many reasons to be thankful.

It started out stressful a few months ago. My brother and his family, who moved to Boone, NC, in August, had told me they were coming to town for Thanksgiving, and it was my consolation when they left. However, I apparently never mentioned this to Don.

Then one day Don's brother David, who was supposed to come to town with his family in June to meet Cooper for the first time but had to stay home because he had a heart attack, called. Don talked to him and then came running up the steps, excited, and told me that David and his family were going to come for Thanksgiving.

Enter stress. A family of 5, plus a family of 6 (who don't even know each other), plus Don, Cooper and me, plus my parents. Hmmm. Our house just isn't all that big.

Then Don's brother Doug also wanted to come with his family of 3. I began to try coming up with alternate plans about where we could eat. I didn't think we could possibly all fit in our house.

I prayed about it and tried not to stress. Sometimes God just works these things out. Always, really, though we don't always understand what he's doing.

We found out that none of them wanted to stay at our house, which relieved some of my stress, but the biggest break came when we found out Don's brothers weren't coming until late Thursday night. That way, we would get to spend Thursday with my family. They have lots of friends here in town they wanted to visit with, so they could do that on the rest of the days they were here.

And so it went. We had a wonderful day on Thursday (except that my dad was sick and didn't get to come), and a good visit with Don's brothers and their families on Friday and Saturday. The weather was beautiful and we went to the park, the zoo and did as much together as we could cram into two days. They left early Sunday morning, so my family all came over (including my dad) for breakfast, and then we all went to church together before they headed back to Boone.

So all in all, it was a great weekend. Don keeps saying it was the best Thanksgiving he has had in a long time, and I'm inclined to agree. Cooper had a blast with his grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins and was sad to see them go (and especially his Uncle Andy).

God is good, and I am thankful for all of our blessings, especially our family.