Thanksgiving and her first word!

Happy Thanksgiving! I received a call from my grandpa today reminding me to ponder my blessings. Gratitude is what today is all about. We all have so much to be grateful for; the list is really rather overwhelming! I'm grateful for an abundance of food on our table. I made my first ever turkey on Tuesday and am happy to report that it turned out delicious and we have lots of wonderful left overs! 

I got my husband to eat turkey by serving it with fat free honey mustard. We served our potatoes with minced garlic and onion sour cream, we like our green beans best with bacon, and we enjoyed baked apples stuffed with brown sugar and spiced oats for dessert.

I'm grateful to have a family to cook for and eat with. 

I'm grateful to have spent an evening full of laughter with our neighbors and friends. They were even so kind as to prepare ALL gluten free dishes including amazing stuffing and to- die- for mac and cheese. Seriously, I've been cooking gluten free for over a year now and they out did me tonight.

I'm grateful for a daughter who... wait for it... wait for it... said her first word!!!! And, the word was... Mama! Yay!! A couple of nights ago, she was crying out at night and I was laying there listening; clinging to the Ferber Method promise of self soothing babies, when I heard her cry Mama. I was so surprised that I went to her right away, but as I soothed her I convinced myself that I had made it up. However, when she awoke in the morning she again cried out, Mama! And then that was it. No more Mamas in the night. No Mamas during the day, not even with all my coaxing. Surely, I had heard something in her baby babble that simply wasn't. Until today when my husband went to fetch her from her afternoon nap. She didn't stop crying when he picked her up and then she called out Mama! And, she reached her little arms out to me when he came into the room where I was waiting.

We snapped this photo today to show off her pearly whites.