I Am So Thankful

Hey everyone!  I’m so happy Thanksgiving is tomorrow.  I love this time of year!

I know a lot of folks are “anti Christmas until after Thanksgiving” people, but I think all of the Christmas hype adds to the Thanksgiving fun!  IMO, The Holiday Season begins the day after Halloween and Thanksgiving is ONE of those Holidays that make the season so great!

Kev is one of those “Thanksgiving Purists” who thinks we should give Thanksgiving the respect it deserves by NOT starting the Christmas celebrations until after Thanksgiving is over.  Well, to that I say….”Pfffft, let’s get this party started!”

I just love the Holiday season so much and love to draw it out as long as I can!

Okay, I’ll be quiet now.

Anyway, I AM very thankful for Thanksgiving because it’s a holiday that is all about family, thankfulness and good food!  I try to live my life with gratitude each day, but it seems like during the month of November I feel an even greater sense of appreciation for the blessings in my life.  Sooo, I thought I’d take a minute and share some of the things I’m grateful for!

Note:  I will warn y’all that I went through a bunch of my old pictures to find some of my “thankful things” to share with you guys and I started waxing all nostalgic and found SO MANY pictures I wanted to share!!!  I apologize for the photo dump. 🙂

First and foremost, I’m so grateful for family!

I love my sweet little family and my wonderful parents!  I’m so so so thankful for the unconditional love, guidance, example and comfort my parents have given me throughout my life.

I’m so thankful for Kev’s amazing, wonderful parents who I love so much!  They are a perfect example to me of faith, humility, hard work, service and love.  I’m also so grateful for the incredible son they raised. <3

I’m so so so grateful for the family I married into!  I don’t have too many pictures of Kev’s family on my computer, but here is a picture that was taken this summer with a small portion of them (I’m not in this pic because I was in the other room tending to the baby!)….

Kev is #8 of eight siblings and they are some of the best people in the world!  Seriously, Kev’s family is the type of family who sings songs around the piano, plays board games together, acts out skits at family reunions, does family talent shows and just knows how to have fun being together!  They really are phenomenal.  I’m so so so grateful every day to be a part of such a great group of people.  LOVE THEM!!!

I’m also sooooo grateful for my family that I grew up with and for all of my sis-in-laws, bro-in-laws, nieces and nephews.

This picture was taken around my parent’s 50th Wedding Anniversary a couple of years ago.  I’m so so so so grateful for all of these good peeps in my life!

I LOVE my siblings and am happy to say they are now some of my best friends!

I am #6 of seven kids.  The pic on the left was taken this summer and the pic on the right was taken a couple of years ago.  I love that picture on the right because it’s my sisters AND my bro-ster!  My sweetie pie brother Richard is closest in age to me and my sisters, so we adopted him as one of the sisters!  Ha ha.  I love ALL of my siblings so much!

I’m SOOOOOOOOOOOOO (to infinity!) grateful for the man I married!  This is a pic of us when we were dating way back in 1995.  We were babies!

I am unbelievably grateful for this wonderful man.  He’s my best friend, my favorite person to “hang” with, my confidant, my comfort and my world.  We love to laugh, have deep conversations, plan goals together, be totally immature together and just BE together!  It sound cliche, but he really does complete me and I fall more in love with him every day!

I LOVE my babies and I’m so grateful to be a mom!  This picture was taken in 2008, after I had my fourth baby.  It makes me so sad to see how little my kiddos were and how quickly they are growing up!!!

I love my kids with every tiny piece of my heart!  I just want to kiss them, squish them, put them in a bubble and protect them from hardship, broken hearts, hurt feelings, the cruelty of the world and all of the inevitable trials they will eventually face.  I’m sure all of you mothers out there can relate.

Life is rough and one of the hardest things to do as a mother is to send my children out into the world hoping that I’ve taught them enough, loved them enough, prepared them enough, and have just DONE enough!  I know that life experience will make them strong, brave, empathetic, wise and good, but MAN it’s tough to not protect the crap outta them.

Even though this whole “mom thing” is a tough gig, I’m so grateful I get to experience it!  I wouldn’t trade it for the world!

I’m also so grateful for the many friends I’ve had at all the different stages of my life!

These sweet ladies made up my childhood!

OH, HOW I LOVED my childhood!  I grew up in a cul-de-sac with a lot of kids!  Our childhood was spent making up plays, riding bikes, exploring in the gully behind our houses, making up clubs, playing night games, running around barefoot all summer long, jumping on the trampoline and just having fun!!!

I’m also grateful for the wonderful friends I grew up with and went through Elementary school, Junior High and High School with…

I’ve known these ladies since we were all in diapers and they are all so special to me!  A few of my friends are missing from this picture too.  The memories I have with these ladies are some of my fondest memories!!!  I love them so much!

I’m so grateful for my group of college friends (the girls in this picture were also my childhood friends) too!

OH MY WORD, we had so much fun together!  We pretty much laughed our heads off constantly, played crazy pranks on each other (involving roomfuls of newspaper, a giant snowman, a live duck, a dead fish, shaving cream fights, etc.), went to Vegas together, met the real live Greg Brady together, went rollerblading a lot, dealt with a whole lotta drama and made some unforgettable memories!

I’m also grateful for the friends I’ve made in my adult life in the many places we’ve lived.  We lived in Rhode Island for several years and I cherish the friends I made there!  In fact, some of our very best friends from RI just came to visit us tonight.  We took some pictures, but they are all on Kev’s phone, so I’ll share them another time!

We also lived in New Hampshire for several years and made so many great friends there!

We all met each other at church and a lot of us didn’t have any family nearby, so we became kind of like family to each other!  We spent many holidays, birthdays and fun times together.  Oh, how I love them!

I have so many other friends I’m grateful for that haven’t been included in my pictures!  I have so many great friends living in my neighborhood right now that I loooooove!  I love and cherish all of my friends!

I’m obviously soooo grateful for the people in my life, but there are so many other things I’m grateful for too!

I love this beautiful world we live in!

I am in awe by the beauty all around us.  I love summer sunsets, rainbows, rainstorms, the mountains, fresh snow and all of the different seasons.  Utah is such a fun place to live because we can enjoy the beautiful mountains and canyons and then head to southern Utah and enjoy the incredible red rocks and National parks.  LOVE IT!

I know there is beauty in every part of the world!

I’m so thankful to live in a free country that I love so much!

 

I’m also so grateful for the men and women who have fought for us to keep that freedom!  I have several family members who have been/are in the military and I’m so honored.

I’m also thankful for my health!  I know a lot of people who struggle with poor health, handicaps and ailments on a daily basis.  It’s so tough to watch them suffer.  I’ve definitely learned to not take my health for granted!  Part of the reason I’m so passionate about healthy living is because I AM grateful for an able body and I CAN enjoy health!

I definitely have a sweet tooth and love to splurge from time to time, BUT I do take my health very seriously.  I strive to FUEL my body with good clean food and WORK my body with regular exercise.  My poor body has taken a beating this past year as I’ve muddled through life as a mother of 6 (with a baby!), but I look forward to regaining full strength, vitality, energy and some semblance of order soon!

I’m also so grateful for my faith and the church I belong to.

I hope you all know that I appreciate and respect all other religions out there!  I certainly don’t want to offend anyone by mentioning religion.  But, my list would not be complete without it!  My church has blessed me my entire life.  I’m so grateful for the purpose, direction, peace, meaning and fulfillment it gives me.  It makes all of the other blessings in my life that much better!

Well, I could go on and on and on and on (and I have!), so I will end my “thankful list.”  I’m sure you’re all thankful for that!  Ha ha.

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving spent with those you love.  I also hope you all eat a lot of yummy food!  Ya know, most of the time my blog is full of healthy food ideas, ways to lose weight and all of my jabber about healthy living.  However, on Thanksgiving I say….ENJOY YOURSELF!  Eat whatever the heck you want and don’t feel guilty about it!

Some years I’m more health conscience on Thanksgiving and some years I’m not.  I think since my life is so hectic this year, I’ve been focusing more on stress relief and just enjoying life.  WELL, pigging out on Thanksgiving fits very nicely into the whole “enjoying life” part of things.  Ha ha.  You just can’t pig out every day, obviously.  Enjoy a Thanksgiving feast and then get back to being mindful and accountable!

If you’re looking for “healthy Thanksgiving ideas”, you can read this post from a few years ago.  If you’re looking for Thanksgiving exercise motivation, you can read this post or this post!

This year….I got nuthin.  Ha.

I love you all and wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving!  If you go Black Friday shopping, I hope you get a lot of good stuff!

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