A great Thanksgiving!

Rand's office invited employees and their families up today to watch the Macy's day parade. When he told me about that I was so excited. Thanksgiving is my most favorite holiday. No, not second to Christmas, my very most favorite holiday. I don't know why exactly, but when Christmas comes it always seems a tad anti climactic and overly commercial, and then you have the blues settle in that basically the holidays are over and you have the rest of the winter to look forward too.(except who looks forward to January and February and the meak and dreary winter) So I love Thanksgiving because it's kind of like Christmas in that it makes you reflect on the important people and things in your life, without all the stress of shopping and buying and crafting etc.

I'm happy to report that I did have a rather amazing epiphony the other day. I was reading Elder Ucthdorf's Talk from conference about priorities and how we are spending our time etc. I whole heartedly admit that in my dream world I would cook and bake and decorate like Martha Stewart, and that my house would always be clean and organized and my children darling, accomplished and polite all the time. The reality is that my life isn't like that. I am blessed with a great life but no one is knocking on my door to interview me for a Mormon ad or asking me my advice on how I "do it all". So often I realize that I'm trying to do big and fabulous things to make my kids have big and fabulous memories. The other day I suddenly realized...they don't care. They don't know the difference between some fabulously planned and executed activity or something simple and quick that we spend time together doing. In fact last night as I was getting my Christmas cards together my girls sat at the table for me for hours making "books" and various other things with stickers and rub ons that I had out on the table. Totally unplanned and they had a blast. In fact, if seems that when I have a project like that out they are more than happy to just "create" something without any foresight or plan. I need to remember that.

I was in the car with Ethan the other day and he kept saying he wished it was Christmas. I told him he really didn't because then it will have already come and gone and he would miss all the fun things we do before Christmas. His reply? "like what?" All the things I've planned and stressed about have certainly made a huge impression on him. Ok, so I know if I gave him a minute he could probably (I hope) come up with some of the things that we have done, but truthfully I had to give it a little thought myself. After that conversation and the article I read, I finally realized...keep it simple! I think half the time I want to make it big and beautiful not for me but so I could say that I did. In fact, I know it's typical for instance that when you have someone else over to dinner that you nicely set the table, have nice napkins and maybe even a theme or centerpiece. When do I do that for my own family? I'm not talking every night, but for instance we are actually having our Thanksgiving dinner all by ourselves tomorrow. I am going to make it nice but realized I need to do things special because I enjoy that, not to try to impress somebody else. How often do we compare ourselves to others or thing we don't measure up when that person we are measuring ourselves against probably feels the same way.

Ok, so I've obviously gone off on a random tangent, but on this special Thanksgiving day I'm grateful when we are blessed with insight that somehow makes our life not only easier, but much much happier. I'll post pics tomorrow of our fun trip into NYC and the Macy's parade!