Happy Thanksgiving 2009!

Hope everyone out there is having a great Thanksgiving weekend filled with family and love.

That said, Thanksgiving has taken on different meaning as I've gotten older...not that I'm that old.  I've ALWAYS loved Thanksgiving.  I love the food, for sure, and being with my whole family.  Yes, I'm 35 years old and we still get together with my extended family including aunts, uncles, grandma, cousins and sometimes a great-great aunt.  I love that about my one side of the family.  My other side has always lived further away and were just never that close.  Not to mention having your non-typical family around.  We have friends that are as good as family.  They're a lot like brothers and sisters to us and extended aunts and uncles to our children.  You have to love family like that.

But, as I said it's taken on different meaning.  We still get together with the whole family, eat until we're sick, laugh, play games and catch up on the events over the summer months when everyone's too busy to get together.  Now, I can take this holiday and sit back and really give thanks for my life.  Give thanks for our lives.  Give thanks for some of the bad that's happened that's shaped who I've become, who I will be and my amazing life I've been given.

I'll regress for a bit to say that almost 14 years ago we lost our first daughter.  That hurt so bad and it still pains from time-to-time, but I now know that without her loss my oldest son would not be here.  I was pregnant with him before she was due to be born.   And as scary as it was to have two born with defects and me having a chromosome translocation, which I once thought was the end of my world, I am thankful for these events and the way God made me.  I don't know that I would have been fearless enough to take a leap of faith, with not enough money, to adopt 3 amazing kids.  I use to grieve my translocation and it use to hurt to see other people pregnant when I thought I would never have kids.  I'm so thankful for this and have been for sometime.  Every Thanksgiving as I'm standing in line with my husband and kids filling little plates I'm thankful all those little plates need filled....by us!

So this year is Jaemin's 1st Thanksgiving with us.  I get very emotional on their firsts and you would think after 5 I wouldn't, but I'm just so happy and amazed at the gifts in my life and the second chances we've been given to be together as a family.  It's a joy going to grandma's and watching him explore and be with his cousins and extended family and smiling away.  It's a joy having him with us.  He's a true joy and this year, I thank God for my baby Jae!

Lisa