Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is an odd holiday for me. Out of the last 6 Thanksgivings, I have only spent one with my family. My Thanksgiving tradition is that all day I am overwhelmed and humbled by the love poured out on me by the people the Lord so generously puts into my life. For the past 6 years, every Thanksgiving has looked completely different then the one before, but all have been special, and every year, the Lord provides.

This year, the day started with the Turkey Trot - a 5K race hosted by the local YMCA. I ran it with Natalie, a friend from work and one of my very few female allies in the IT Department. I have no idea what our time was, but I felt like we did pretty well.

Right after the Turkey Trot, I headed to the park for the 2nd Annual Alethia Church Turkey Bowl. One of the awesome things about being a part of a new church is building traditions around the things we love. So far that has primarily been eating and football. Clearly I picked the right church.

Last year, about a week before Thanksgiving, one of the pastors sent out a church-wide email with an open invitation to play football on Thanksgiving morning. We basically had just enough people to play a game. Even though it was literally zero degrees, we had a blast. I don't know what exactly it is about sports, but it's such a great way to form quick bonds with people. Plus, the war stories are phenomenal. I mean a whole year later I'm still that girl who accidently broke a guy's nose at the 1st Turkey Bowl. Oops.

This year when I arrived at the park, our church had 4 teams on 2 different fields. Now that is something to be thankful for! If our church keeps growing like this, we may actually have to put a little bit of organization into the 3rd Annual Turkey Bowl.

Next on the day's agenda was a quick trip home to shower, change clothes and get my Thanksgiving dishes. This year I was only responsible for green beans and a dessert.

Question: If you are eating Thanksgiving dinner at your pastor's house, how inappropriate is it on a scale of 1-10 to bake a cake with Kahlua in it?

Answer: It doesn't really matter as long as it's tasty - even though it kind of capsized.

Thanksgiving 2011, the Lord blessed me once again and I ate dinner with the Bhatt family. Sam is the head pastor at my church and so much fun to be around. I met him in the summer of 2008 and never would have imagined that a few years later I would be "aunt Dani" to their kiddos and celebrating Thanksgiving at their home. Thankfully, Amber is not your typical pastor's wife and is quickly becoming one of my closest friends. Izzy and Liam are two of the cutest kids in the world. I think these two just ignored the memo that I am not a kid person and found their way straight into my heart.

Izzy is really outgoing and loves everyone, but she just has this way of making me feel so special. She is probably the most complimentary pre-schooler in the world. Every time I see her she has something sweet to say about my hair, clothes or accessories. That particular day she loved my red necklace and went upstairs to get her red necklace so we could match.

Liam cracks me up. Even at one year old, it's blatantly obvious he is the introvert in a household of life-of-the-party, extraverts. When you are as adorable as Liam people just want to hold you and play with you all the time - every week I watch complete strangers try to hold him and he just screams his head off. Then there's me, I just could care less about the cute pastor's kid liking me. The irony though is that Liam LOVES me and wants me to hold him all the time. I'm not kidding. When he just sees me in the room, he makes a b-line crawling right toward me, climbs up my leg, and yells until I pick him up. He followed me around all day and I just couldn't say no to that cute face. Lima already knows I'm a sucker for him and Izzy.

One of the things I love about Sam and Amber is that they always push me to do things I wouldn't normally do. They are the ones who call you at 10:30pm on a weeknight and tell you to get out of bed and meet them at the movie theater. That being said, I think Amber is the only person on planet earth who could convince me to take part in the Black Friday madness. We went to Kohl's at midnight and had to stand in line just to get in the store. Once we found a few bargain items, we headed to check-out, which was an hour long line by the way. As far as Black Friday shoppers are concerned, I thought people at Kohl's were pretty polite and nice. It was a rat race for sure, but a friendly rat race. I didn't find any sale items I just couldn't live without, but decided to buy a $15 Christmas sheet set. I mean who doesn't love flannel Christmas sheets? What better way to get into the holiday spirit?

Around 3am I headed home. What a day! There was so much to be thankful for just in those 24 hours. Thank you Lord for your many blessings! You are so kind to this sinner saved by grace.