Thanksgiving!

I'm incredibly excited about Thanksgiving tomorrow!

We have spent the holidays overseas, away from family, since our marriage began. Richard's first base was England, and now our second is Turkey. We lack the money and ability to make it home to see our family and the ones we love during the holiday season. Instead, we make a small family locally to share our holiday season with. Thanksgiving is my tradition (Christmas too, but that's a later post!)

Every year we have had others over to our home for a "family" style dinner. I still remember my first year as a spouse, cooking a giant feast for 10plus people (half of whom I didn't even know!) and it turned out amazingly! Since then, I conquer Thanksgiving with vigor and joy. I enjoy having people around me, and have always enjoyed cooking. Thanksgiving Thursday is my time to get together with a military family, whom would otherwise not have the joy of a "family" meal.

This year will be our biggest party yet! I find this kind of funny since we've only been at this base for a little over a month and a half...

Thanks to Richard's work schedule he has to work Thanksgiving day. ALL day... (He also has to work Christmas day... but hey! That is this life.) Anyways, we created our normal Facebook event because everyone knows it isn't official until it is Facebook official, and invited all of the people we had met and liked here. Then we decided to invite Richard's crew, and the other guys who have to work Thanksgiving with him. Now we have at least 20 people coming over! Most of them are here unaccompanied (without their spouses and/or children) or don't have anyone else to spend the day with. Which, I guess, is kind of all of us over here! It feels good to be surrounded by others in the same position as us. These people become our family when our real ones are unable to join us.

I will most definitely be taking pictures and posting another post either tomorrow or Friday. It might just be pictures, as I'm hoping there are no huge disasters that happen that would require me to actually write!

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I hope that if you are reading this and you are military, you know that you have a family in all of us.

I hope that if you are reading this and you have the pleasure to spend Thanksgiving day with your family, surrounded by those who love you, you will think of and pray for all of us small families overseas, all of those military members deployed, and all of those spouses back home wishing they had their loved ones.