Giving Thanks

I didn't intend to write a Thanksgiving thankfulness post, since it seemed almost cliche.  However I was inspired by several that I read, including this post at Mental Multivitamin and this blog I ran into through one Carnival or another, where Karen is in the middle of listing 1,000 things (gifts) that she is thankful for.  Her goal is to complete this by next year but she is already off to an impressive start.

It is good medicine for the soul to think about and meditate in gratefulness and just the beauty of life more often than I do.  I have been blessed (some would say lucky rather than blessed) far beyond what makes sense to me.  In the day to day grind I so often forget just how incredible life is!

So... I am thankful for

My Spirituality - which has been through the highest of highs and the absolute lowest of lows.  My path has gone from childhood fundamentalist Christianity to complete disillusionment to exploring everything from Native American spirituality to atheism to Catholicism, Judaism, paganism, wicca, various forms of Christianity, agnosticism, etc. ad infinitum, and has finally leveled out into just being my path.  I have absolute peace with my faith, and I am grateful for all of the pain and soul-searching and anger and desolation that it took to get there.

My Family - I have been blessed in so many ways.  My husband is smart, happy and successful in his career, an excellent cook, an involved and caring father, a good provider, and my best friend.  My kids are the most amazing, adorable, talented, and sweetest people in the universe (to me ;).  We have grandparents nearby for the kids, including an amazing grandpa (my husband's dad) who was widowed two years ago and is just SO involved with the kids - attending sports and other events, taking care of them when I have to go to meetings out of town, buying special food, movies, and video games for them to keep at his house, fixing dinner for them to visit every week, bringing us sushi when he goes shopping at the base, the list goes on and on!

Homeschooling - After working in a classroom for four years, and having my kids in my school, it was so exciting to be able to bring them home to learn.  I became more and more dissatisfied with the education that they were receiving; they were starting to hate learning and to just get through the school day.  They were not learning much at all, they were doing tons of busy work and they were not thriving as I wanted them to.  I had been so anti-homeschooling when I met my husband (that's another long story and has to do with my experience homeschooling as a kid) that it took a couple years to convince him that it was a good idea.  The timing was perfect.  William was finished with 8th grade, so he would be leaving the private school we were all at anyway; Kevan was going into 5th, which is when the other kids started to really form cliques and band together against other students; Ben got to try kindergarten and get a taste for what school was like.  It has been, and will continue to be, a huge learning process to constantly adapt to each child and find what works best to reach them and light their fire.  As much as it may never be done perfectly, at least someone is trying!

My home - I love the town I live in (not everybody does though, lol)!  There are always gorgeous sunsets over a riverbed and cliff right outside my house, a 2 mile trail along the riverbed, a park a couple blocks away, plenty of stores, a great library (for a small city), and we can get to the beach in 10 minutes, to waterfalls, snow, desert, mountains, lakes, whatever we want within an hour or two max.  I love our house, a beautiful (well, before WE moved in it was more beautiful lol) 2700 square foot 2 year new house with plenty of room for our stuff.

My job - I love my job.  I work from home in virtual education.  I get to do what I love - teach and create teaching materials - from the comfort of my home and teach my favorites students of all, my own kids.  Even though it can be a challenge to "do it all", I am so blessed to be able to continue to build my skills and experience in my chosen field while homeschooling.  The second income provides many things that we could live without but that make life more pleasant - the larger house, the lessons and activities, cable, high speed internet, Netflix, Audible, books, video games, gadgets, etc.  I don't feel that it is a sacrifice to work for my paycheck because I love the field and it is exciting to be a part of it.  Ten short years ago I was a "starving student" and single mom when I met a "starving student" and single dad and we fell in love.  We were a starving student couple for a few years, and then starving working people for a long time (it seemed at the time although in total it's only been 10 years since we got together) before we got to where we are now, which is comfortably tight but planning and investing for the future.

So, tomorrow when my dad, stepmom, brother and father-in-law come over to join us in gorging ourselves on an over-abundance of food in our warm home with our comfortable clothes, our adorable pets and our myriad of entertainment options, I will try to capture the feeling of abundance and blessedness like a snapshot that can be referred to time and time again throughout the year when things don't seem to be quite as perfect as they really are.