Grateful

So my last few posts have been downers. I sincerely apologize to all four of my dedicated readers. It's amazing what a long weekend will do for your mood—until Sunday night comes around, of course. But I'm not going to bemoan the fact that I have to turn my alarm clock on again tonight. Instead, I'm going to stay out of bed for a little while longer, enjoy my Christmas lights, and remember what a great weekend this turned out to be, even though I wasn't in California.

Yes, it was Thanksgiving, so I thought about all the things I'm thankful for. The list was long and included all sorts of things, from my Primary class to peanut butter cups to the fact that it's unlikely that California will fall into the ocean before I get there again. But today I turned on my Christmas playlist and one of the first songs that came up was U2's "If God Will Send His Angels." (In case you were wondering, it's on the Christmas playlist because it has the lyric "Does love light up your Christmas tree?" in it. Duh.) Anyway, it made me think about how I've been especially grateful for angels that have shown up in the form of family and friends this past week. I don't know if God sent them or not, but either way, I'm grateful.

So thank you to my family, who make me laugh, who make delicious pies, who don't care that I swear at the Christmas lights, who have fabulous recipes for yams that they're willing to share, and who don't give me grief about skipping a party I don't think I could have faced. And thank you to friends who send me e-mails throughout the workday and who decide they need to go ice skating and invite me to come along. And thank you to coworkers who decide we need to visit Crown Burger for lunch or who stop by my office just to chat. And thank you to other friends who Zumba with me and then hang around afterward to talk or who go to Chili's after class and invite me to join them so I can avoid cleaning up my yard for another few hours and have a little more fabulous craziness in my life instead. All of those people are the ones who make life worth it, and they are what I'm truly grateful for this Thanksgiving weekend—well, them and the peanut butter cups, because you can't live without those either.