Thanksgiving - Part Deux

So, I totally forgot to add Joshua's cookie pictures and our family portraits!!!

Joshie made (well, cut out) gingerbread cookies and he actually did a good job! Here's a few pictures of him:

And my sister, Jessica, was so sweet and took all our family portraits for Christmas. We haven't had a family picture since last year, so it was nice to have one with Jenna being a little older. It was funny though to see Hana with all the kids....and to see Sherrie try and get a "grandkids" picture....You try getting 5 kids all 3 and under to sit down!!!

Thankful

Thanksgiving is not just a time for eating delicious food, but also for being with family and remembering to be thankful for all the wonderful things and people that are in our lives each year. Thanksgiving is always a "difficult" holiday for me. I don't mean difficult because some horrible tragedy happened, or some awful anniversary is remembered. I mean difficult in the sense that since we moved out here to Texas its made me so much more thankful for my family that I ever was before.

I have a large family and every year for Thanksgiving we would all gather together and be thankful for each other and the past year. We're not talking about a "small" gathering...or even a "large" one in the sense that a lot of people think of large. When my family gets together for thanksgiving, there's between 60 and 90 people there...all family and related and closely knot together. That's in California.....We're now in Texas....that's why its "difficult".

This year was different though. This year my family back in Cali didn't get together. So many people are spread out all over the country now and with my grandparents and their brothers/sisters getting up in age its harder for all of them to get together. This made me so sad to think that the gatherings had come to an end. How could anyone not want to drive a million miles to spend time with the family?! But then came a sense of thankfulness. I was thankful that I got to spend about 23 thanksgivings with my family together and that I could always remember that and bring that legacy here to Texas for my kids to see.

We celebrated Thanksgiving at my sister Jessica's house. There adds on more and more people every year, and before long we'll have our own group and lots of people to celebrate with. We're off to a good start too - we've been here 3 years and we've got about 20 family members so far: dad and his wife, Sherrie; Jason, myself, Joshua and Jenna; my sister, Jessica, her husband, Shon, and their little boy, Elisha; Shon's sister, Mary; my sister, Vanessa, her husband, CJ, and their daughter, Caitlyn; Sherrie's brother, Monty, his wife, Letty, and their kids: Jessica, Joey, Jacob and Megan. This year we were even blessed with Hana, a foreign exchange student from South Korea that has been staying with my parents for the year. There's a lot to be thankful for, that's for sure!!!

Here are some pictures of our fun time together:

Jenna's first Thanksgiving meal! She loved it!!

Joshua playing with baby Megan (7 mo)

Monty with baby Caitly (5 mo)

Joshua playing underneath the table

Shon's sister Mary, Elisha, Jessica, Shon, Jessica, Sherrie, Hana


Vanessa, Caitlyn, and C.J.
Jason and Joshua during the prayer

Jenna chillin' on a chair

Thankful Tree

So this is the first year that Joshua is "aware" and can conciously remember things and traditions, so Jason and I are working on starting cool little traditions with our own little family for holidays and stuff. Since Thanksgiving is tomorrow and I grew up with such a strong family tradition of being thankful for my family, I thought it would be nice if Joshua made a "thankful tree" that he can have as our centerpiece during the dinner.

I wrote our immediate family's names on each leaf and put some glue on the back and let him stick the leaves wherever he wanted to to make the tree. As we put glue on each leaf I read it to him and we said a little prayer for each person whose name we came across. We thanked God for putting them in our lives and for them being special to us. When it was all put together I told him - "See, all together we make this tree - we are all a part of a family and we all fit together and support each other. Each one of these people love you very much"

We haven't figured out what we're going to do for Christmas yet, but we have some time still for that one.