Thanksgiving

I enjoy reading how my friends and acquaintances spend their holidays. In fact, I love going to other blogs and reading humorous anecdotes, recipes, opinions, book reviews, and all those other things folks blog about! I also realize that I rarely ever make time to post to our own blog. I will try to do better.

Because we live thousands of miles from our nearest family members, our family has never spent the holidays with our blood relatives. The last time I spent a holiday with blood relatives, MerryK was a wee infant and while I was on the east coast, Clankeeper had a severe asthma attack and was rushed to the ER. The X-ray they did for pneumonia ended up showing us that he had a tumor, which turned out to be Hodgekins lymphoma. All that to say, it has been a very, very long time since we have spend a holiday with our family.

As a result of our distance (and lack of funds to travel) we began to gather with other friends from church who did not have family nearby for the holidays. For nearly 20 years we have been meeting with these same friends, plus new families who have joined us over the years, as well as anyone else we can invite! As our families have grown over the years, the group as swelled. In recent years some of the young adults have married and started their traditions or have been visiting with their in-laws. This year, we met at our church building so that one of our guests, who cannot maneuver stairs well, could join us.

Our Thanksgiving fare includes all the basic foods, with each family choosing one or two things to bring, and then bringing enough for 20-50 people, depending on the size of the group we are expecting. Our family usually brings Clankeeper's Chex Mix and dessert...which means lots and lots of pies. This year we only made 9 pies: 2 regular pumpkin, 1 diabetic pumpkin, 2 chocolate cream, 1 banana cream, 1 blueberry, and 2 Dutch apple. I love doing the pies since I can do them the day (or two) before and then Thanksgiving day is relaxing. Some years we try new pie recipes, and some years we keep it traditional.

Other than lots of eating, we chatted all evening...enjoying each others company. The children played Apples to Apples and other games involving running and squealing, which were only possible due to the extra room at the church building. I was hoping to teach the children some folk song dances that require lots of people and lots of room, but we ran out of time. I'll have to do plan that for another time. Maybe Christmas.

It is impossible to imagine our holidays without our dearest friends. The blood that ties us together is not the genetic one, it is the blood of Jesus. These are friends who have been there through all of our joys and trials, births, marriages, sicknesses and deaths. We share all our burdens and all our blessings. We vacation together, field trip together, and share our day to day lives together. We are family. And even though we all have oddities and irritating traits, we forbear with each other, we support one another, we encourage one another and we love each other completely. And for these dear friends we give God our daily thanks!