Be Blessed

I'm so excited for Thanksgiving! It may be my favorite holiday, right after Christmas and all the holidays that involve warm weather. Ok, so it's my favorite food holiday. There, I said it. 

I love Thanksgiving for the food.

I love it so much I've started hosting it in my home. Somewhat Partially Mostly so I can be in control of the food. I've been locating recipes and planning shopping lists for next week's menu for a month now. I'm disappointed that there will only be 13 people in our house on Thanksgiving. Wanna know why? Because the more people there are, the more food I can make without hearing, about a zillion times, "We don't need this much food!" 

Ugh. I know. 
We don't NEED ALL this. 
But I LOVE ALL this. 
I WANT ALL this. 

Don't try to stop me. Don't ruin this for me. I want to do it my way today.  

And I want to do it for you. 

Our guests. Our guests joining us this year and for years to come. Whomever you are, I want to bless you. I want you to feel blessed by the fact that you can come to my home, relax in front of the tube and watch giant Snoopy balloons float over the streets of NYC. I want you to be blessed by a turkey and stuffing and pie and wine. I want you to be blessed by the fact that God has blessed all of us with each other.

I know this holiday is about family and friends and being thankful for all we've been blessed with by our loving and almighty Lord.  I am thankful. I try to be thankful each and every day. I try to go to bed each night with this thought leading me into prayer:

"What if you woke up tomorrow with only the things you thanked God for today?" 

If that doesn't throw you heart-first into a thankfulness prayer, well, shucks. I don't know what to do besides say a little prayer over you. 

So while I'm putting the time and effort into this Thanksgiving dinner, know that I'm doing it because I want to. I want to bless you. I don't want you to ask me ten times what you can do to help. I'll give you a job when I'm good and ready. In the meantime, have a glass of wine and enjoy being blessed.

This year's menu includes, but is in no way limited to,:

• Turkey
• Stuffing (God bless Great-Grandma Myrt for sharing this top-secret recipe. If I could only have one "Thanksgiving food" it would be this one.)
• Mashed Potatoes (homemade, obviously)
• Sweet Potatoes with brown sugar and marshmallows (duh) 
• Corn Casserole (Brian's favorite)
• Green Bean Casserole (Ella's and my favorite)
• Rolls (everyone's favorite)
• Apple Butter (we canned that last fall)
• Cinnamon Butter
• Cranberry Sauce (homemade from scratch, Ella's favorite)
• Gravy (I still let mom do this for me, she's so awesome at making gravy)
• Pumpkin Pie
• Pecan Pie
• Apple Pie

The good Lord only knows what I've left off the list, but rest assured there will be a big bowl of Chex Mix for anyone with parade-time, pre-feast munchies. My Mother-in-Law will bring her cheese ball and relish tray. Mom will help with the pies and everything else on Thanksgiving Day. My Sister-in-Law will offer to do the dishes. When I say "that's ok, I'll do it later", she'll say "I didn't have to cook, at least I can do dishes!" and I won't stop her. She does a really good job and it is a blessing to me. One of the biggest blessings, really.

Whatever table you find yourself at this Thanksgiving, consider it a blessing from the hostess. She wouldn't have invited you (at least in most cases) if she didn't want to bless you with this gift. Find a way to bless her back. Cleaning up leftovers. Washing dishes. Accepting the invitation and enjoying a relaxing and restful day of Thanksgiving. 

This Thanksgiving I encourage you to not only consider and verbalize your thankfulness, but feel it. Absorb it and own it. 

Be blessed.