Being thankful at Thanksgiving

We haven't posted a travel blog in a while because . . . we haven't traveled in a while. We are still nestled in our cozy campsite near Kansas City. Our only traveling is the 30-minute trip from our campground to our son and daughter-in-law's house in Lenexa, Kansas. We've made that trip so many times that we can tell you there are 12 stop lights, and we call it a personal victory if we hit 8 or more on green. We are thankful that we can thoroughly spoil our two grandchildren on our daily trips. If you can't tell from the picture below, our two-year-old granddaughter has us wrapped around her finger.

Eli is over a month old now, and we have fallen head over heels in love with this little man!

We are also trying to be helpful, as we volunteer to keep Baby Eli at home while Dad is at work, and Mom has errands to run, or big sister has to go to swim lessons, or there's a doctor appointment . . . Since Luke is a pediatrician, he has seen some mighty sick newborns that were exposed to germs that their little bodies can't handle yet. So he is following the advice he gives his patients--newborns shouldn't be out in public until after their two-month vaccinations. So we are thankful that we can soak up the time that we can hold little Eli at home. He seems to sleep best on a warm body.

We had COVID when Eli was born in October. It seemed like terrible timing then. But now we are thankful that we have some immunities from corona during the Thanksgiving holiday. Our son and daughter-in-law from Oklahoma City came down with COVID about a week after we did--right after the record-breaking October ice storm in that state. They can say that the only thing worse than getting the worst symptoms of the corona virus, is getting them during the 14 days that their house was without electricity because of that ice storm. We are glad to report that they are once again healthy, and they are thankful to finally get to meet Eli.

Luke has to wear PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) at his job at the clinic. Even though he sees sick patients every day, he tested negative on a COVID test this week. Jordan has been home with a baby for the last month. So we are the poster family for a safe Thanksgiving gathering in this crazy year of the Corona virus. We are thankful that we got to spend four days together with both our sons, daughers-in-law, and our two grandchildren. This was a great time to snap the annual Christmas card picture. But without any extra people at our gathering, we had to use a cell phone on a timer, perched precariously on top of a box that was balanced on top of a trash can. Now you know that it is a miracle that we got everyone smiling and their eyes open--including two little ones. Well, maybe Eli wasn't smiling, but that's understandable for a one-month-old baby.

We did a lot of cooking in preparation for the Thanksgiving meal, and Gram was thankful to have such a cute little helper in the kitchen. Carter kept sneaking tastes of the crumbs we were using for the crust of our cheesecake.

We were also thankful that Luke volunteered to cook the turkey this year. He is quite the chef with his green egg smoker.

That was the best-looking and best-tasting turkey we ever remember eating! Denisa was glad to have everyone pitch in to help with the meal!

While Luke was preparing the real turkey, we are thankful that the rest of us could have fun decorating turkey-shaped brownies.

One of the decorators (Mark) was a little heavy handed with the frosting. Another decorator had evidence on her face that she had been taste-testing that frosting.

Blake and Claire brought the ingredients for chocolate-dipped-peanut butter balls, so Carter got lots of experience making Thanksgiving desserts.

We are thankful that our family likes to play games together, both indoors and out-of-doors. We were also thankful that we had good weather to play some pickleball. Our games are less competitive now that we have certain distractions.

If we zoom in on the court we see that one player has to keep the stroller moving to keep Eli happy, and all the players have to dodge the two-year-old walking randomly on the court. That's not to mention the distraction of grandparents that are trying to play with people half their age.

We are thankful that we got to spend this fun time with our closest family during this pandemic Thanksgiving. It's hard to think that we spent last year's Thanksgiving meal with 48 relatives under one roof. With all the changes that 2020 has thrown at us, we're thankful that 8 of us had a safe and healthy holiday together!