Thankful

thank•ful (t̸haŋk′fəl) adjective 1.feeling or expressing thanks; grateful

It’s November and with that comes Thanksgiving. I think that Thanksgiving is sometimes an overlooked holiday. It always falls in the middle of the week, which doesn’t always make it practical to get home to see family. Last year we talked our work into being closed on the Friday after Thanksgiving. This of course allowed us to take part in the frenzy that is “Black Friday”. Black Friday is truly the only day that I will get up at 4:00am to stand in the snow with my friend to get the best deal on socks that we don’t really need!

This year we get Friday off again, but instead of staying here, I plan to travel north to visit my family and friends. I am excited to see everyone and of course to take advantage of those Black Friday sales.

All that aside, Thanksgiving should be longer than one day. Every day we should stop for a moment and give thanks for something. It’s easy to focus on what goes wrong during the day, what it was that set you off and ruined your good mood. Did someone at work make you mad? Be thankful that you have a job. Did someone cut you off in traffic? Be thankful you have a car to drive. Did you have to bag your own groceries at the grocery store? Be thankful that we have the freedom to walk into a mega-store and purchase just about anything we want.

This month, I am going to base my blogs around things that I am thankful for. Some may seem more trivial than others, some days are harder than others to find something, but hopefully this will open my eyes to more than what is immediately in front of me and cause me to think about how much I take for granted.

Here is one thing that I am thankful for:

To you it may seem like just an average picture of the ocean. But to me it means that I have a husband who loves adventure. Together, we have spent hundreds of hours in the car traveling here and there; just the two of us. We have some pretty serious conversations, some that were silly, and even a few times when we weren’t speaking to each other. These moments and conversations probably wouldn’t have ever happened if we weren’t traveling. I am thankful that we the kind of life that allows us to travel and see different things. I am thankful that my husband is pretty easy going on these trips. Most of the time he gets in the driver seat and heads out in the direction that I navigate (or “nagivate” as he likes to say because he thinks it’s funny).  I am thankful for all of the memories of these trips.

In case you were wondering, this picture was taken 4,000 miles into a 7,000 road trip. It’s a beach in the state of Georgia. We stopped here to pick up a mason jar of sand for my niece, Georgia.