I'm Thanktastic

Holidays are a good bookmark of time.  Last Thanksgiving, we were at my parent's house, celebrating the first Thanksgiving in the new addition of their house.  It was the first Thanksgiving without my grandmother.  This year will be the first Thanksgiving without my grandfather (her husband).  This will be Baby Jonah's first Thanksgiving.  The subtractions and additions to our life don't stop.  For that, we can be thankful.

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Beloved has been voted into the Union.  That sentence sounds a little like he's the state of New Hampshire pre-Civil War, but I've been assured this is a good thing.  But it feels a little mafia-ish to me.

Picture these guys wearing Carhartts and driving pickups and it might be Beloved's Operator crew

Now, every time I've ever seen The Sopranos, it's been all stripper poles and curse words.  Will there be piles of cocaine and nighttime body drops in my future?  Hopefully no more than usual.  But for this secure job, this opportunity to work (and to work overtime when the Bat Signal is put out there), we can be thankful. (I'm also secretly hoping this job comes with me getting a super mafia accent and the right to stay home all day and cook for my unthankful, mafioso family.)

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Our house has been nothing short of amazing for us.  The oddity of an upstairs kitchen:

I have it decorated differently.  But can you see why I fell in love with it?

The fantastic window seats in the kitchen, living room, and upstairs bedroom.  The pool.  The pellet stove:

Again, it looks different now that it's ours.  I don't even have a Kane.  But you can see the pool through the windows.  Deuces!

And Beloved would have me mention the biggest garage in Clifton.  

He will be in there in the dead of winter.  Because it's his.

Man-cave extraordinaire. Buying that little piece of heaven was hell.  But worth it.  And for all the lawn raking-induced blisters, the gray paint under the fingernails, the mouse traps working effectively, the hot meals, the old-school Nintendo games played at night, the quietness of the locale we picked, we can be thankful.