thanksgiving

Like most of my friends, I'm noticing the automatic and breakneck speed of the switch between grotesque Halloween decorations to Christmas in our stores, advertisements, etc. I remember shopping for fall decorations in *AUGUST* and finding Thanksgiving items marked 40% off! Now that's great for people who like to seriously plan ahead...but the items were being cleared for the Christmas decorations that were starting to take their places of prominence on the shelves...in August!

Mike and I were discussing this phenomenon today during our brief moment of coherence (we've had a nasty stomach bug all weekend). We decided that businesses make more money on Christmas - it's easy to capitalize on generosity/greed. It's hard to make a lot of money on a holiday that capitalizes on being grateful for what one has already received!

Thanksgiving is still one of my favorite holidays - second only to Christmas, even though I know the truly spiritual list would probably be 1. Easter 2. Christmas 3. Thanksgiving (unless you're my friend Amy who shared recently why Halloween should be one of the Christian's top holidays!)

So in the spirit of Thanksgiving, for the rest of the month, I'm going to follow the great example of Nicci and daily blog my gratitude to Jesus for the big and small blessings He has showered on my life. Today, I spent the morning mopping and scrubbing upstairs to kill any remnant germs while Mike entertained Mags downstairs. Shortly afterward she joined me upstairs. I walked by my open front door that I had just cleaned... and saw something like this:

In my pre-mommy life, I would have royally freaked out that someone had dared touch my pristine glass front door ... but I walked by this front door, saw a chubby set of hand prints on the lower half of the glass, and almost cried. I'm so grateful to Jesus for giving us a little baby girl who has grown into an amazing toddler who can walk to a door and leave hand prints.

Have a happy month of giving thanks, friends.