Early Thanksgiving

 “If you want to turn your life around, try thankfulness. It will change your life mightily”  Gerald Good

Today was an amazing day.  We invited all of our home teaching families over for an early Thanksgiving appreciation dinner at our house.  Joyce and Bob Ober had one of their sons and their daughter in law with them at their house.  So we told them to bring their family also.  The more the merrier.
Maude Dallman came and so did Loren and Cynthia Willis.  So, we had seven extra people, plus Josh, Miracle, Mikayla, Anya, John and me.  John and I got up at 5:00 this morning to get the turkey and stuffing going.  I also had to make french toast strata for breakfast.  It is the girls favorite breakfast and takes a little work, but it is not too bad to get it all ready.
I finished breakfast while John stuffed the turkey.  We got everything in the oven and the roaster and then I sat down at the computer with Mikayla and finished her talk.  It was mostly done thanks to the gospel art kit in our upstairs library.  If you haven't seen one, you should look.  It makes helping the girls with talks so much easier.  I love it!  It has a library of pictures with the story on the back.  It is perfect for primary talks and could also be used for family home evening.
Anyway, we got everything done and then went to church for three hours.  I had a class to teach and we didn't want to miss church anyway.  We made sure everyone was still planning of coming for dinner, and than we came home and finished the dinner.  I did not get my Sunday nap, but that was ok because we had a really great time with everyone.
John made mincemeat pies for the first time and they turned out pretty good.  He loves them and it is tradition in his family that his mom makes mincemeat pies every Thanksgiving and Christmas.  It is an aquired taste and the girls all prefer apple pie!  He made one for them too.
We visited with everyone for several hours and had good conversation with very good friends.  The kids are coming up Thanksgiving day and so we will cook again for the rest of the family that is able to come here.  We should have this down now!  It was so nice to have our families over for dinner.  I wish we would have thought of this before.  It was such an nice way to visit with everyone.
I wanted to end with this quote.  It expresses how very important I believe gratitude is to each one of us.  It is not the things that happen to us in this life that are the problems, it is how we face those difficulties and what we do with them that make or break us.  Attitude is everything.  

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity.... It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
Melodie Beattie

May you have gratitude for everything life brings you.