Thanksgiving

As my dad says, right now we're on borrowed time. So Thanksgiving this year was special. My heart was happy to be with my family, grandparents, and the Hamm family. {and yes i did get asked several times "Wait...you're having ham for Thanksgiving and not turkey?" and yes i AM super extra really mad at Bethany for going to "Haiti" instead of being here. I will probably never speak to her again. Probably.}

It may have been the best Thanksgiving I can remember. It was relaxing, we had good food, good families, there was a really good football game on, I read a little Harry Potter, we laughed a lot as always, painted fingernails, snuggled by the fire... it was perfect.

I'm finding its easier to just BE where I'm at right now and in turn really really enjoy where I'm at. I know I'm leaving in about five weeks so that means I slow down and enjoy the moments I have. The take-home lesson here is... continue to live this way when I'm not preparing to move really far away.

Its easy to get busy, for life to be hectic, and that hectic seems normal. FYI, it's not. We start to think--"facebook needs to be checked, this email needs to be read now, this text needs to be replied to, etc." It doesn't. They can wait. Almost nothing is more important than the real live person you're spending time with right now. I think that's something I will always fight for. To be fair, it takes some work...breaking bad habits, disciplining yourself to make new habits {which in the end, include thinking of someone else instead of yourself}. I never regret the times that my phone is away and out of my mind... but I DO regret when I look back and think "why did I feel like I needed to check this-or-that?" I hate wondering if someone has felt de-valued because whatever is on my phone seems more important than they are... probably because I know I feel that way when someone can't have a conversation without responding to every *ding* their phone makes.

"...a doctor named Marcel Tuchman. He was the most compassionate person I have ever met in my life — I mean, full of human kindness. And every time he met somebody, you had the sense that he cared more about them than anything else in the world. So what I learned from him is that when you actually are with somebody, you’ve got to make that person feel like nobody else in the world matters. I think that’s critical. So, for example, I don’t have a mobile phone turned on because I’m talking to you. I don’t want the outside world to impinge on the conversation we’re having... Every moment counts, and that moment is lost if you’re not in that moment 100 percent."

-Tachi Yamada, M.D., president of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Program.

Somehow my Thanksgiving post turned into a soap box! :) Maybe because I have only 42 more days in Lincoln, NE and each one feels important.

Also. We somehow FORGOT to take pictures!!! So... here's the Clamm Easter picture again... because Thanksgivng looked similar because Beth is not in this picture...except we were at the Clark house... and plus Ray and Wini {and maybe a few embellishments.........}