Thanksgiving

The first thing I am thankful for during this season of gratitude is that my 40-day "fast" is over and I can finally blog again! The past few weeks have been nice. I read a lot. Played a lot. Prayed a lot. Rested a lot. And knitted some. But, not long after I purposely turned off my creative mind, for some reason, inspiration hit. Surprisingly, there were times when it was quite challenging not to follow the brainstorms and see where they led by writing everything down. But, I stuck to my plan, and just relished in the fact that God is still working. I won't bore you with all of the thoughts and insights that resulted from the fast; I'll just say that it is definitely something I will do again.

In Gideon news, (since that's why you're here, isn't it?), things are great. He is walking almost all of the time now, which has been fun but tiring at times. And his vocabulary has expanded quite a bit to include words like, tree, umbrella, shoe, bellybutton, and my favorite, Amen. (Of course, he has the Gideon-version of all of these, so don't get too impressed with his multisyllabic vocabulary.) And, his favorite toys currently consist of: dirt, rocks, bottles of vegetable oil and ketchup (because he loves playing in the pantry), and cans of hairspray (because he loves getting into our bathroom). If these trends continue, it should make for some very interesting Christmas shopping!

We had a fabulous Thanksgiving, spending most of the day at Jason's cousin's farm house in Palestine. Of the 17 children in Gideon's generation of great grandchildren, all but four are boys. And, many of them have blonde hair and blue eyes like Gideon. It is crazy to see him around so many of the other boys and watch the similarities surface. They're like little clones of each other!

Here's Gideon with three of his "clones" - his cousins. We thought it would be a great idea to get a picture of all four boys sitting on the big metal horse. Obviously, they didn't agree.

The adventure for the day was four-wheeling. Naturally, Jason and Gideon went for a joy ride. Why wouldn't a one-year-old want to go four-wheeling?

Gideon played so hard at the farm that he was snoring by the time we turned off of the dirt road leading from the house, which is maybe a quarter of a mile long. He had a great time! After an overnight stay in Livingston at the lake, we drove to Orange, Tx, to visit more family. We had lunch with my Great Aunt Imogene and my Great Uncle Bobby (and some of their kids and grandkids). This was an exceptionally special time for me because I hadn't seen any relatives on my real mom's side of the family in probably ten years or more. And, they realized the last time I was at their house was the Thanksgiving before my mom died, so this visit was 21 years overdue. We ate an awesome lunch as Gideon spread cornbread all over their dining room floor, looked at old pictures, told stories, and had a great time. It was nice to hear stories about so many of my relatives. One of my favorites... sometimes, when my Uncle Bobby was running late for school, they would just hop in their plane and my Granddad would fly him to school instead! They didn't have an indoor toilet, but they had a plane! I could listen to stories like that all day.

Here is a picture from the day. We stayed so long, poor Gideon fell asleep.

I'll leave you with that, for now, but stay tuned. I have 40 days of silence to make up for!