Thanksgiving

Our little family

 Today, we have a lot to be thankful for. I thankful for my family, both my immediate family and extended family. They mean the world to me. I am so thankful to have such caring and supportive people in my life. I am also thankful that my grandma will be coming home from the nursing home tomorrow. We have been worried about her being there. So, we are very grateful that she will be able to go to her own home tomorrow. She will be much more comfortable there. And, I know I have not mentioned it on here, but she fell and hurt herself recently and has been unable to walk. So, I am also thankful that she is able to have a caregiver come to her house instead of being stuck in a nursing home.

I am also thankful for a job that gives me such flexibility so that I do not have to work holidays, and I can make my own hours. I have worked jobs, in the past, where I had to work holidays. I usually got stuck with Thanksgiving, Christmas eve and 4th of July. Now, I make my own hours and can decide when I work, as long as I see my clients in a reasonable time period. This also means, I am able to take time off for Ben's different appointments and for the girls school functions and things like that. I am also thankful that Joe has a job that allows me to work at a job that I love so much. This is truly my dream job and I am so fortunate to finally be able to do the job that I love so much. However, due to budget cuts in Illinois, as well as the  fact that we can not have Ben in daycare yet, I would not be able to do this if it weren't for Joe's job.

But mostly, I am so very very thankful that in their time of grief, someone chose to be a hero and donate their loved one's organs. We are able to see our little guy grow up. We get to see him crawling around, and walking with a walking toy, playing with his sisters, babbling at us, and generally getting in to mischief the way any normal 1 year old would. When I think back to that day in December that Ben was diagnosed, we didn't know if he would make it day to day. I never allowed myself to think about him turning 1 because I didn't know if it would happen. I cried one day when we were in the hospital, because I saw a little baby, about 6 or 7 mths old and I was terrified that Ben would never be able to see that age. But now, here we are, he is 1 year old and thriving and doing so amazingly well! This Thanksgiving we are much much more thankful for all we have in our live than we ever have been. Knowing how fragile life is, just makes us appreciate it even more.