Thankful for simplicity

What a wonderful Thanksgiving; I hated the thought of the day ending, I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day. It’s been a stressful year and I’m ready for 2010 to be over, but there have also been praises to God for answered prayers and I have much to be thankful for. Yesterday, for the first time in a long time, my family was able to spend an entire uninterrupted day together; no computers, phones, knocks on the door or anywhere to be other then a family dinner. The boys didn’t have share their daddy with work or a community (nightmare) project; it was just the four of us!

I woken up in the wee hours of the morning with a little boy opening our bedroom door asking if he could cuddle in bed with my husband and I, a few hours later Hayden joined us. We had breakfast in bed while all snuggling together watching the Macy’s day parade, afterwards it was a lot of playing together on the living room floor, family craft project, watching a movie, reading books and an afternoon family nap. We celebrated Thanksgiving dinner with my husband’s family (in-laws, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins…), though it isn’t written in stone we all have a specify item we bring; my husband makes canadels. The best way to explain a canadel is "stuffing ball"; but with more ingredients and there spicy. It’s a family recipe that has been passed down for generations, I’m not sure what the origin of it is but it’s delicious and so not healthy (fried in bacon grease). The recipe is primarily made at Thanksgiving and Christmas; my husband took over the role of making canadels in 2002. The joke in our house is our Christmas cookies are canadels. Though it seems my six year old Canon Rebel XT picked last night to begin its dying process, I was still able to capture a few special (blurry, out of focus) moments of my favorite Thanksgiving thus far.