Thanksgiving with family

It is really won­der­ful when your grown chil­dren want to come home and visit you and each other. I feel as though we have been very blessed and have so much to be grate­ful for. All my kids (I call them kids even though their ages range from 15 in a few days, to 20, 24 and 26) are happy to hang out together. We live where the air is clean and the roads aren’t too busy. We have access to good live food. And even though our friends are mov­ing away, one by one, to big­ger and bet­ter places, at the moment we are happy to be here.

In our first 19 years of mar­riage, we actu­ally moved 20 times. Don’t ask me how or why, it just hap­pened that way. We have been in the house we cur­rently reside in since 2000 though, so maybe another move will be in the stars. Either way is fine by me. Vis­it­ing and liv­ing in dif­fer­ent places and cul­tures opens your mind to God’s vast­ness and cre­ativ­ity. It also gives you the expe­ri­ence of how we are really all the same on the inside. God’s love is every­where, it is just that some can see it and oth­ers call it some­thing else. My expe­ri­ence though is that most peo­ple expe­ri­ence it in some form or another, whether they call it that or rec­og­nize that or not. Who cares, so long as love and respect is expe­ri­enced by all.

My kids have met and lived with peo­ple from many coun­tries and cul­tures. 4 dif­fer­ent con­ti­nents in fact. India, Aus­tralia, Europe and East­ern & West­ern states of North Amer­ica. They have lived in Ashrams as well as apart­ments and houses, large and small, board­ing schools as well as col­lege dorms. They’ve lived with room mates and alone.

They have expe­ri­enced many dif­fer­ent types of schools.  Wal­dorf (Rudolph Steiner in Aus­tralia), Montes­sori, Quaker, Sid­dha Yoga, Pub­lic, Non-Denominational Pri­vate, Catholic, and Home schools.

My first and last were born in South Falls­burg New York as home births and the mid­dle two were born in Aus­tralia, one a cesarean and the next at a pri­vate birthing cen­ter in to water.

My daugh­ter has grad­u­ated col­lege with BA in Art His­tory with a con­cen­tra­tion in Archi­tec­ture and a minor in Math and is now mar­ried to an Alban­ian fel­low whom she met while liv­ing in Eng­land for 2 years. He was liv­ing there also at the time.  They both have jobs they are happy with where they have both been promoted.

My old­est son grad­u­ated with a BS and has started his own busi­ness as equal part­ner with my 2nd son who is half way through col­lege. Both earned Eagle Scout rank with Boy Scouts of Amer­ica, one while we were in Ore­gon and the other while in New York. They were also nom­i­nated as pre­fects at their school in Penn­syl­van­nia and are also mem­bers of a band named The Ingre­di­ents. One is a drum­mer, the other a lead singer, song­writer, com­poser, guitarist.

My youngest is lov­ing his 5 day board­ing school and was so happy to see his older sib­lings over Thanks­giv­ing. He told me he always feels a lit­tle down and sad when they all leave. He is look­ing for­ward to being on IS (Inde­pen­dent Study) after his first trimester grades were so good, he earned that status.

How for­tu­nate we are. Thank you Thank you Thank you to all who have influ­enced our lives.