Gratitude: The wrap up.

I feel like I've had to be really perky lately. Yay! Life is fun! I love everything!

Eh. That isn't really me. I mean, I get excited about things, really, really excited sometimes, but I'm not a ultra-positive, I-need-my-daily-affirmation type person. But I do try to be thankful for what I have. That is the real Becky.  (Not that I've been pretending to be someone I'm not. I just resent the enthusiasm a little tonight.)

But, I need to wrap up this month-long quest I've been on.  Did you know I have never, ever in the whole time I've been blogging had 18 blog entries in a month?  Wow. The most I've ever came up with was 15, and that was a few years ago. However, perkiness aside, I have had a great month blogging. It was fun to come up with so many different kinds of posts. I hope I can do as well next year.

My favorite thing about this Thanksgiving is all the new things I've tried.  Before this past month I had never:

• Whipped real cream
• Grated a fresh lemon
• Had a need for cornstarch
• Baked a pie crust
• Separated an egg
• Made a pie (I actually made two, Thanksgiving's lemon-meringue, and a pumpkin I made on Sunday.  Mmm, pie.)

Furthermore, things I want to remember from Thanksgiving:

• Having Thanksgiving at my sister's house.  It was fun to shake things up a bit.  It was the first time my family has eaten Thanksgiving together since 2006. And, miricle of miricles, everyone was there.  We had 29 people in all.
• Sitting at the table for a few precious moments with my five oldest nieces and their spouses (the ones who have them. BreAnn, don't even think about marriage yet, okay?). All those beautiful girls I have watched grow into such amazing women were sitting all around me.  I felt so lucky to be their aunt.  And so grateful they found great husbands to take care of them.
• Talking about washing dishes and filling up sinks with Amy, Kayci, Lyndsay, Shane, and Clint.  I was watching Amy wash dish after dish in a sink that wasn't filled with water (which is my natural tendency.) It sparked a fun conversation.  We all wash dishes the same; well, us girls do.  The boys fill up the sink. Strange thing to run in a family, right?
• All the drama leading up to the blizzard that wasn't.  But it did get me home early on Tuesday, which was nice. We spent the night watcing the snow blow, eating cookies and yummy rotisserie chicken and potatoes.
• My mom starting Thanksgiving off with a lovely thought about how, as a young girl, she told herself that she would have a big family.  It made me cry when she reminded us of our sweet grandparents who she said would have been proud of the people we turned out to be.  It felt like they were right there, in the room with us.
• Visiting Shane's mom afterward.  It was nice to sit for a moment in the quiet and eat some pie.  You know, since I forgot the one that I made at my sister's house. Argh.

So thanks for sticking with me for this month of gratitudes.  I am grateful I have this blog to record all these rambling thoughts of mine. And I'm grateful for you reading my words.  It is an amazing thing to put my thoughts out here and know that you will read them and think about them and maybe use them to spark something amazing in your life.

I am grateful.

What will you remember from this Thanksgiving?