Love Thursday: Thanksgiving + Family

Thanksgiving is a great way to focus on gratitude and family. To me, the focus is being together, sharing a meal and some time talking, and thinking joyfully about the year. For some, I know this has been a tough year and others a marvelous one. Wherever you fall in the spectrum it is nice to sit back and just be glad for what you have. Our year has been such a chaotic mix of wonderful, sad, hard, challenging, sweet and amazing. In all that whirlwind that is our life it is nice to have some time to just give thanks for what we have.

Today, I am giving thanks for a wonderful family that supports, strengthens and loves us. We are so lucky to have such an amazing support structure and lucky that our family are our friends too. We love them all and the love we share is my focus this love Thursday. We will share Thanksgiving with the Dotter/Blakley clan this year (we're on a rotation so Christmas day with the Rouse/Richards bunch). We'll miss the Richards/Rouse clan, but will try to catch at least Brent's parents over the weekend.

As for the Dotter/Blakley crew, we're lucky as most (maybe all?) of my mom's four siblings will be there as well as some of their spouse and kids. Audra, Able & Zach will all be there too. I can't wait to gather up all the hugs, smiles and conversation to store up for those times we're not in the same space. Here's hoping your Thanksgiving is full of family, fun and a quiet moment to appreciate all the good things we have in our lives. Happy Thanksgiving and hugs to all of you!

(PS, no clue why the pictures are so weird today, but the last one is B and I with our Thanksgiving donation. The rest are our immediate family-- some pics are from last year, can you imagine B so small?)