Thanksgiving...

I stayed up way too late last night finishing the second book in the Hunger Games trilogy (which ended up being 1:30). This morning at 9 am, my mom came into my room, and to me, what could've just been her normal volume sounded like she was practically screaming in my ear, "IT'S TIME TO HELP WITH MAKING FOOD, I LET YOU SLEEP IN!" I groaned inwardly, as I thought to myself, "Uh yeah right, this is NOT sleeping in." Sleeping in for me is 11 am, although this semester, 9 am is definitely considered sleeping in.

After a good long shower to wake me up, I was ready to get started in making some yummy food. We made all kinds of delectable things for tomorrow (which I am SUPER excited about) such as a pecan pie (my personal favorite kind of pie), pumpkin cupcakes, green bean casserole, etc. Getting to cook and bake with my mom and sister is always fun (even though they hog a lot of the "fun stuff" to do such as icing the cupcakes without me! JK), and it's always fun for several reasons. For one, we're always insane around each other so we always either drive the others up the wall or we laugh until we cry. Another reason is that it lets me sort of catch up with what's going on at my house whenever I'm not there (which is Monday through Friday during the day and sometimes at night).

Today has shown me several different things to be thankful for:

1. The time to actually stay up really late and do some "free" reading (which I almost NEVER have time to do). Even though I didn't get as much sleep as I wanted, I was definitely blessed to have an immense amount of time to finish reading my book (and start the third one in the series).

2. The time to spend a whole day with my family. Even though I live at home and commute to JBU every day, and even though I'm home on the weekends, I seriously have not spent a whole entire day parked at my house and spending time with only my family since before college started this semester. I'm always rushing about from this place to another, and hardly ever slow down. Which leads to my next thing to be thankful for...

3. The time to sloooow doooowwwn. I love being busy. I love the rush I get when I have a moderately full schedule, filled with fun and exciting things to do and spending time with people in those events. But one lesson I'm having to learn right now is to take things slow sometimes and just take a deep breath. Even Jesus had to go someplace quiet and get away from everything for a while and pray and encourages us to do the same at times (Matt. 14:13a, Mark 6:31) Whenever I am resting and taking things slow, it is refreshing and I feel more energized afterwards to be more productive and such.

4. The people God has put into my life that I call my family. Not just intermediate family, but all of my grandparents, uncles, and cousins fit into that category. Every single person is different, in their personalities, looks, and mannerisms. When we all come together, however, we all seem to become unified. I'm also very blessed to have most (if not all) of my family members be believers in Christ, so we can always talk about deep, meaningful things and not feel weird about it.

5. The food God has provided us with. Not just for Thanksgiving, but for every day. I know people hear about this all the time, and some people don't really care, but I always feel guilty of complaining if some type of food I may be eating doesn't own up to my expectations, when there are people around the world dying of hunger or thirst. We here in America have it WAY too good, and we don't even realize it most of the time.

These things are only a few of the many, many things I could name, but these were some big ones. I just thought I'd share some of them since it IS Thanksgiving Day (it's currently 1:15 AM as I'm typing this). :)

I hope all of you reading this have a great Thanksgiving Day yourself! And go hug your aunt or something. For real.