A Thanksgiving to be Thankful For

After Brandon and I got married we had approximately 7 months to prepare ourselves for the "who gets Christmas? who gets Thanksgiving?" issue that married people face. You know the issue I'm talking about. The one where you have to divvy up how much time you spend at his folks' place and how much time you spend at her folks' place...etc...etc...etc...
That first year of marriage we felt that we had an especially difficult time because that particular year all FOUR sides of our family (ie...his dad's side, his mom's side, my mom's side, my dad's side...) were ALL in one city. And it just so happened to be all in one day.

So we did what every brainless couple would do and chose to attend every single event all in one day.
We tallied up about 3 quality minutes with each person we're related to, ate entirely too much turkey and pumpkin pie, and argued each and every minute of alone time we had that day.
We swore we'd never do it again.

Flash forward to a week ago, Thanksgiving day.
We were approximately 12,000 miles from said city where 7 years ago all of our family was gathered...save three.

Brandon's mom, dad, and sister flew those 12,000 miles to spend Thanksgiving with us!

It was a great day. Fabulous. It felt just like Thanksgiving is supposed to. A little chaotic. A little noisy. Food taking longer than it should to cook. An assembly line to fill up your plate. Aunt Terri's bacon wrapped green beans. Everything a Thanksgiving day should include (in my small world.)

Minus my folks, my brother, his gorgeous wife and kids, and my fantastic sister and cool husband.

But because God is so awesome, He provided family here in family's place.

And it made me realize that He's been doing that all along. It took me moving across the world to realize that having four Thanksgivings is something I should be Thankful for.

Now that I'm literally half a world away from all of that, I'd give anything to attend four thanksgivings again. I'd pass Caleb around to all 76 some-odd people that would surely hold him that day. I'd wonder what room Uncle Ron had run off to to read a book. I'd get smoked yet again by Granny in Rats. I'd eat an extra helping of Aunt Susie's dressing just because I could. I'd look like a total moron during Trivial Pursuit at Aunt Jeri's house. And I'd hug everyone really tight because that's what you do when you love people.

I'm thankful for FOUR sets of family. I'm thankful that "his" family is my family. And this year I'm so incredibly thankful that they endured overseas flights to have Thanksgiving China-Style.

We had a full house on Thanksgiving day...


That week we showed them some of the sights of the city.






Eden is unsure of that bright yellow thing in the sky that we so rarely see!


And when we weren't out exploring the town, we did a lot of just hanging out.





The kids opened early Christmas presents.


Salem was pretty smitten with Aunt Nay Nay.



You can't come to China without seeing the Great Wall, right?



And just to make sure that they'd all come back again some day, they each got a turn on the back of our new ride.


(more pictures to come!)

We love you guys and are so grateful you braved a trip to the Big Chicken to spend Thanksgiving with us!