with gratitude.

Listening To: The Day of Small Things by Alli Rogers
Perfectly Gorgeous Description: "Professor Cake was a hunched old man with a voice as knotted as his knuckles." - from Jonathan Auxier's Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes

"All this noise, and all that sound.
All those places I got found." - Coldplay


Color me grateful for a long weekend,
for crunchy leaves
and sunrise skies
and crumbly pie crusts.

For the wild and crazy women in my family who love to cook,
because they love to love.
And cooking is one of the ways they love.

Cooking is not the way I love.
But they're okay with that.
They tell me all I ever need to bring is myself.
And my appetite.
Score.
(But I took a caramel cake anyway.
Because caramel cake = fudgey deliciousness.)

This weekend was cranberries and pretty china,
hot coffee and spiced cider,
and sweet potato casserole
covered with brown sugar and Georgia pecans.
Which I pronounce puh-con.
But my brother pronounces pee-can.
(My way sounds prettier.)

We all held hands and whispered grace,
prayers of thanks and and hope and health.
We whispered Christmas words.
We told vacation stories.
We talked about the people we love
(and miss).
We listened as much as we talked.
We laughed until our faces hurt.

I'm grateful for late night board games.
Cowboy hats and stormtrooper helmets were not a requirement:

But they definitely make opponents take you more seriously.
Or something.

I'm grateful for bedtime stories,
and Home Alone,
and how we've watched that movie so many times
that we mostly have it memorized.
(We laugh anyway.)

I'm grateful for a house full of comfy couches,
and soft blankets,
and fluffy pillows,
places perfect for hiding away,
to read,
or dream,
or sleep.
Or just pretend to be sleeping.

I'm grateful for sweet farm dogs,

For a long walk in the woods,

For a longer walk around the lake,

when the twilight clouds broke apart,

somewhere high-up above me.

Pretty winter crackle-clouds. 

When the sky gets scattered over the water like that,

the whole world looks silver and bright. 

One brave wishing star winked down at me. 

Just one star. And all it did was shine. 

But I thought about how maybe that's all it takes some times, 

just a little incentive to shine. 

Just a little flicker of courage.
No more hiding out.
No more lazy fear.

Maybe the moment I shine is the moment I decide to,
when I stop clinging to the reasons that I can't,

And decide instead that I am going to do

what I love to do,

clouds or no clouds. 

Even if nobody sees. Even if nobody notices. 

But some times they do notice. 

I wondered as I walked.
The world felt so full of hope and expectation and good things. 

These are good days. 

I'm grateful for good-bye pancakes

crunchy on the edges,
cakey in the middle

sweet, but sad too.  

Because whether it's a "good bye"

or a "see ya later," 

leaving is still leaving. 

And leaving always sucks.

But I'm still so thankful. 

Because love doesn't lessen when it's stretched across a thousand miles.

Love doesn't break when I drop it. 

Love keeps reaching,
and threading,
and bending,
and anchoring,
and connecting me to the people I love.
Even if we haven't seen each other in ages.
Even when we can't see each other at all. 

Home is most certainly where my heart is.
So color me grateful;
pick a color that's silver-grey like the sky,
pick a color that's caramel or cranberry,
something comforting and sweet.
Pick a sunrise color for me.

And use it to paint all the places I've left my heart.
They're all home to me. 

I love to think that,
no matter where I wander,
I'm really just headed home again. 

I'm still jet-lagged (in a good way!) from this weekend. And I am very grateful that calories consumed over Thanksgiving holidays do not count. Carbs, FTW! Did you have a good weekend? Read any fun books? Did you see Hugo? Or The Muppets? I would love to hear the best part of your Thanksgiving! (Please feel free to link YouTube clips of anything awesome I might have missed in the parade ...)