On Thanksgiving we give thanks...
Happy Thanksgiving to everybody who is celebrating it today. I pray that you have the fortune of being with people you love, who feed your soul and enrich your life.
Every year Thanksgiving morphs into something new for us. Last year Mikaela was in Europe, but we were fortunate enough to spend the holiday with our two older girls, and their significant others. We also had the joy of having 6 extra young men, from Hunny The Band, their tour manager, one girlfriend, and my oldest friend and her husband. It was a full house, and it was truly a blessed day that has added many memories to my vault. As a little girl these special family occasions were always spent with my entire, rather large, family; that meant my mother, her four siblings, their spouses and my seven cousins. I have such fond memories of the holidays, and birthdays. Every occasion was a cause for the entire family to come together and celebrate. But life has changed, most family members now live hours away, cousins have gotten married, and have families of their own, and with those come obligations to spread the love. Which now sees Yannick and me getting creative, finding ways to celebrate these special occasions while we’re in a holiday holding pattern until our girls marry, and may or may not have children of their own. Until those days come we will spend romantic long weekends away, him throwing himself down a mountain, and me relaxing for hours at a spa…whatever tickles our fancy we will do.
And that my friends is an entirely different reason to give thanks. What a blessing it is to be able to decide how and where we want to pass the time. The freedom to choose is a gift that not all get, today I am thankful for that. I am thankful when life is effortless and beautiful, but equally thankful when it is challenging and difficult. I give thanks at all times because good or bad, I still have the greatest gift of all.
Life.
Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all. ~ William Faulkner, American writer and Nobel Prize recipient
Happy, Happy, with Love,
Shantelle
xo
