So Thankful....

Happy Thanksgiving all! To celebrate this year we were blessed to have both my parents and my grandparents with us. Unfortunately Micah and Joshua and Nate were not here. Perhaps at Christmas we will all be together!

The children wanted to post what they are thankful for this year....

Hannah- "for my piano."
Here's a picture of Hannah at her recent piano recital. What a blessing it is for me to have such beautiful music as "background noise" in our home.

Jacob- "for my parents homeschooling me." (No prompting on my part, honest!)He didn't choose this picture, but I thought it was pretty funny!



Gabriel- "that I have been chosen by God for salvation." (Col.3:12)



Abigail- "for my parents."

Caleb- "for Lance." (no, he is not a horse, he's a dog, really!)



Joshua- "for my swing"




Josiah- "for my new bike!" Josiah, our little preemie baby (born 13 weeks early) turned 8 last Monday.



Jonathan- "for being such good friends with my brothers..." (Jon is in the middle in the orange shirt.)




Daniel- "for our bantam chickens."

No, I don't usually have chickens in the house, but it was getting a little dark out for pictures...


Timothy- "for chocolate chip pancakes!" (ok, so this one's a little blurry, but so cute!)

Tom (the patriarch of our family)- "I am grateful for our boys being such a big help to me around the house." Here's a picture of Jacob jackhammering a hole in our garage for a sump pump. What a job that was! Four hours running a jackhammer is a big job!

In addition, today Gabriel replaced a GFI outlet in our rec room without any help (or trips to the ER!)

Now it's my turn. I suppose since it is my blog, I don't have to abide by my "choose only one thing to be thankful for" rule that I imposed on the children, do I?

I am so very grateful for:

• My precious Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Truly I am more aware each day of how little I deserve and how very much I have been given.
• My husband Tom, the most fabulous leader for our family. He truly leads by example, loving the Lord and serving his family with all diligence.
• My twelve children, plus son-in-law Joshua! My heart is full to overflowing with gratefulness to the Lord for each one of them~ with their own unique talents, personalities and ways of blessing me.
• My parents, Tom's parents and my grandparents~ they each contribute a richness to my life that fulfills me and serves as an example for me to follow.
• Friends... all of you~ you have loved and encouraged me this past year in so many ways. "As iron sharpens iron, so one (wo)man sharpens another."
• The many, many material things that I am blessed with here~ our beautiful old farm house, etc, etc. I find myself embarrassed to mention them as I know that so many in the world have so little.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I pray that your day has been as blessed as mine has been.