{"id":5204,"date":"2011-11-23T22:48:46","date_gmt":"2011-11-24T04:48:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/polarbear60.org\/randr\/?p=5204"},"modified":"2011-11-23T22:48:46","modified_gmt":"2011-11-24T04:48:46","slug":"happy-thankgiving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/happy-thankgiving\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Thankgiving"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;re celebrating Thanksgiving in the US of A, I wish you Happy Thanksgiving.\u00a0 If you&#8217;re not celebrating, I&#8217;m still thankful you are here reading today.<\/p>\n<p>As, of course, thanksgiving is traditionally a time of taking stock of the blessings in one&#8217;s life, I&#8217;ll try to capture a few:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I&#8217;m thankful my parents thought it was important enough to raise me (and my siblings) in a faith-based way.\u00a0 By doing so, they provided me with a solid foundation that has served we well throughout my life.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m thankful they gave me a lot of latitude in my day-to-day life &#8212; they encouraged me to make my own decisions.\u00a0 If I made the wrong decision, there were consequences.\u00a0 Only one time did I believe they issued consequences unfairly.\u00a0 But I sure learned to get clarification on my curfew &#8212; and I think they learned to give the clarification.\u00a0 (I was, I think, somewhere between 12-14, and my friends and I were going out to celebrate someone&#8217;s birthday.\u00a0 I asked when I needed to be home, and they told me to use my best judgment.\u00a0 I think it was a Friday night, and I went home by midnight &#8212; all my other friends had to be home at 10; that should have been a clue.\u00a0 I didn&#8217;t do anything wrong in that two hour time frame, but I certainly had the opportunity.\u00a0 I was grounded for a week for that.\u00a0 I was grounded one or two other times growing up, but I don&#8217;t remember why.\u00a0 This one, because I felt it was so unjust, I remember.)<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m thankful my brother is home from Iraq, and I&#8217;m looking forward to the time when he can be back with his family full-time.\u00a0 I know all too well what being geographically separated means, but I know it&#8217;s infinitely tougher when you have kids.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m thankful for my husband, who is truly my best friend, and the hardest working, most creative person I know.\u00a0 His creativity reveals itself in practical, engineering solutions to daily challenges.\u00a0 I have significant frustrations with him, but he has equal frustrations with me.\u00a0 We mostly recognize that and choose to be together.\u00a0 I cannot imagine spending the rest of my life with anyone else.\u00a0 He&#8217;s always there for me. I sometimes need to\u00a0 remember to let him know he&#8217;s needed.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m thankful my siblings are all capable, successful, productive members of society in their own, unique ways.\u00a0 I&#8217;m proud of each of them for their integrity, honesty, and willingness to do what they need to do in life.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m thankful my two stepdaughters have accepted me.\u00a0 I&#8217;m sure it wasn&#8217;t easy for them.\u00a0 I&#8217;m proud of both them for the fine people they are and their ability to do whatever it takes in life.<\/li>\n<li>Our granddaughters are in high school &#8212; one will graduate this year.\u00a0 They are both fine people, who are there for each other as sisters to support one another.\u00a0 I believe they will be fine adults, and I&#8217;m looking forward to watching them continue to develop and meet the challenges of transitioning from high school to college or wherever else life leads them.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;ve been materially blessed beyond my imagination, and I&#8217;m thankful for that as well.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I hope you&#8217;re able to see the wonderful side of life today, even if everything is not wonderful in your life at this time &#8212; even if it hasn&#8217;t been wonderful for a long time.<\/p>\n<p>I saw a post on a social networking site today that said, essentially, &#8220;Everyday you wake up to a sunrise is Thanksgiving.&#8221;\u00a0 Try to find what makes your day Thanksgiving each and every day for the rest of your life.\u00a0 I believe the more you look, the more you will find, and the happier you will find yourself becoming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;re celebrating Thanksgiving in the US of A, I wish you Happy Thanksgiving.\u00a0 If you&#8217;re not celebrating, I&#8217;m still thankful you are here reading today. As, of course, thanksgiving is traditionally a time of taking stock of the blessings in one&#8217;s life, I&#8217;ll try to capture a few: I&#8217;m <span class=\"excerpt-dots\">&hellip;<\/span> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/happy-thankgiving\/\"><span class=\"more-msg\">Continue reading &rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}