Giving thanks

I love Thanksgiving. It is my favorite holiday. There is always many loud and differing opinions about Thanksgiving and Christmas and when to start celebrating Christmas. Is it too early to get into the Christmas mood before Thanksgiving has even happened? Personally I believe so but not because I think I shouldn't think about Christ or his birth before Thanksgiving, on the contrary I believe we should always be thinking of Christ. He is indeed the center of our lives isn't he? He is in mine. Same with Thanksgiving. I believe in always being thankful for the things we are blessed with. I try really hard to remember to be thankful and to remember all I am blessed with daily. So I like to keep my holidays orderly. I don't like to skip over Thanksgiving because I can't wait for Christmas.

What I do love about Thanksgiving is the opportunity to be around family, enjoying a nice break, eating good food, having good conversation and sharing what we are thankful for. It's such a good opportunity to vocalize those things which enrich our lives when more often then not we are more likely to be internally grateful.

I am grateful for:

-Mark. He means so much to me, I love him.
-Audree and Arya. Having children is hard, 2 far harder then one. But I never ever forget the goodness of God for blessing me with my two beautiful girls. Motherhood is a gift, a pleasure, a job and a responsibility. These girls daily teach me the meaning of motherhood and of life.
-our house. I know sometimes I get really down about where we live and the people we live around and I regret buying this house but ultimately I am really grateful for it. It's beautiful and spacious and warm and it's ours...for that I am grateful
-Mark's job. I am SOOO grateful for this. To explain why I am grateful for this, beyond what's self explanatory, would take too long so I wont but I will never forget how blessed we are in a time like this to have a job that provides for our family's needs.
-my friends. Whether it's friends in Utah whom I see fairly regularly or friends who live in other places and I communicate with on facebook I am so very grateful for you all. I am grateful for my friends that care to comment on this blog or on facebook. I am grateful for texts, visits, messages on facebook, outings, dinner's together, doing haircuts and just plain old hanging out.
-my religion. Although 9 o'clock church positively blows, I don't love our ward and 3 hours is a really long time for little ones I love the gospel. I love my Savior. I love the Book of Mormon. I love the hymns we sing.
-Psych. Ok, so this one isn't quite on par with the previous things but really I love to laugh and this show really gets me laughing. Wednesday, which can seemingly be the most boring day of the week turns into my favorite. It's also something me and Mark watch together which just makes it that much better.
-my in-laws. I haven't always felt this way but I love them and am grateful for all they do for us, whether we ask for it or not.
-my family of course. I don't mean Mark and my girls, I mean my parents and my siblings. My sisters are some of my best friends and my brothers are my buds, especially my Carter whom I miss like crazy. My parents raised me and I'm not doing so bad and for that I should be eternally grateful.
-good food.
-my early Christmas present!
-our tivo...cuz commercials mostly suck

There's probably a million more things I can put but in the interest of many things one of them being not boring everyone to death I'll stop here. :)