Yah, ok, it’s not Thanksgiving………..and yah, I know – those are not turkeys……….but I’m in a thankful mood so I’m going to celebrate it.

What am I thankful for? I’m thankful for these beautiful swans. They are at our local pond. When Mark and I went for a walk this week, there they were – they are always there and we always look for them. They give me joy – just the serenity of them and their companionship – lovely.

*****Update – October 4, 2008 – Check it out!!! We were on our way home and there were turkeys in a field by our home so I had to include them in this “Happy Thanksgiving” post. Aren’t they beautiful?*****

I’m thankful for a wonderful husband. I dreamt of the white picket fence life when I was a teenager. When I was an adult, working at a law firm, the girls at work would always want me to go to the bar after work. It wasn’t my scene – never was – and they would always say “your knight in shining armor isn’t going to come to your house to find you.” Oh how wrong they were. He was a blind date and he did call my parents home and ask me out on a date. He’s kind, gentle, funny, multi-talented (magician, locksmith, expert remodeler, woodworker – a jack of all trades). I most love his kindness and his sense of humor, followed by the fact that he likes the simple life just like I do. Our motto is “less is more”. It’s a grand existence on a simple scale (and no white picket fence was needed to make it all a reality).

I’m thankful for Keith. We decided right away to try to have kids. We were married June 25 and by July 4, we said let’s try. I wanted children pretty bad – Mark wanted to wait. He gave in (easily – I’m pretty persuasive – he can’t resist a good whine – no pun intended as he doesn’t drink). We had Keith the following June 9 (1984). What a joy – a son. We wanted a boy for many reasons, first of which was that he would be the first grandson for my Dad. We were blessed with Keith. He was a good baby – he rarely napped as a toddler and was always smiling – with sweet dimples. We loved Keith so much we wanted another boy. We wanted to have another child right away so they would grow up close in age. We started trying right away.

I’m thankful for Corey – our second blessing. Corey came fourteen months after Keith. I watched him being born. I didn’t watch Keith because it was all new to me. With Corey, I told the doctor to move aside so I could watch in the big mirror. Wow – creating a life is an amazing thing! Corey was a very active little boy. Our favorite thing was when we would put him to bed at night, we would say “baby bear” and he’d do a little tiny baby bear growl and then we’d say “BIG bear” and he’d do a loud big bear growl. He was always happy and smiling.

These boys have been the joys of our life. When they were growing up, they were always polite and would hug everybody to greet them – they were very loving. It has been up and down – as it is with most people raising children. The end result is something Mark and I talk about all the time – watching them grow and spread their wings and be successful in their work and their personal lives, and still love their parents (we think???) – what more could parents ask for.

I’m thankful for my parents. I was their third child of four. Now that we’ve raised two children, I can’t imagine how they did it with the four of us and not much money. We always had HUGE gardens and I hated them. Then lo and behold, I grew up and had HUGE gardens for about the first fifteen years of our marriage. I finally “got” it – you do what you have to do to feed the family, and a HUGE garden is the answer. Dad was a mechanic at home most of my childhood (Grott’s Repair Shop – I loved the sign we had – such pride), so we had a stable background with both parents at home. The girls generally had to stay in the house and do housework while the boys got to work outside with Dad. We would get a nickel for each item that we ironed (I loved the pillowcases and the hankies – those were an easy nickel). Later, oh how rich I felt when we got a raise and were given seven cents per item. It was a treat when I’d get to go outside and help Dad. I used to love when he’d ask me to make him a sign for his business. I’d get to use his permanent markers – very fun. Mom was a stay-at-home mom most of the time I was growing up. She drove bus for awhile – my bus – and that was fun and I was always proud of her. Dad worked on the buses for my school, on the tractors and such for the farmers, and on cars and trucks – I was always proud of Dad too. He would come in at 11:30 every day for lunch. We would all watch The Gong Show and All My Children. On Saturdays, Mom would take us to the little store in town and as a treat, we’d get fresh lunch meat, chips, RC Cola and for a treat, we’d each get a Hostess snack to eat with our lunch(I almost always picked the Hostess snowballs). We’d bring it all home and make lunch and that little thing made Saturdays special. We also cleaned every Saturday. We would get out the albums and play them loud – Elvis, the Silver Fox (Charlie Rich), Loretta Lynn, Neil Diamond – she even had an album of John F. Kennedy giving a speech. We listened to that a couple of times but mostly we wanted the music.

I’m thankful for my friends. What rich friendships I have. If you are my friend, you know I’m talking about you! You are the ones I e-mail with or go to lunch with or lay around the house and just cuddle with the cats and we are happy. You are the ones who share my LOVE of knitting. I value friendships and I am not one of those people who calls everybody my friend. I value that word actually – friend.

I’m thankful for every cat who has entered our lives, starting with Smokey, who we got right after we got married. Then there was Reggie (short for “register” because he went and laid on the register in the bathroom as soon as we brought him home) – this is a challenge to remember all of them but I’ll try – then……..Simon and Murphy (named after a show called Simon and Simon and a show called Murphy Brown), Thumper (loved to thump us when he played), Connie and Mac (named after the kids’ librarian at their favorite library – her name is Connie McLeRoy), KC (shortened version of Keith and Corey’s Kool Cat), Jackie (short for jack-o-lantern because we got him at Halloween), Molly, Carrie and Chloe (those were just random names). All have now passed except Molly, who lives with Keith and Carrie and Chloe, our little lovergirls.

If you’ve made it this far in this post, please continue and read the rest. This part is also very important. On the way home from a visit with Corey this week, there was a song playing on the radio. I always sing out loud (and Mark never complains – hey, another reason to love him). I was singing along to this song and the words just hit me – they hit me hard. I was singing it and looked over at Mark and he was singing it too and then we looked at each other at just the perfect section of lyrics: How wonderful life is while you’re in the world.

So this song is for all of the special people in my life – along with those words: How wonderful life is while you’re in the world.