Happy December

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Mine was quite relaxing. Ever since we have been married Damon and I have spent Thanksgiving in Ohio with the Busters and Christmas in Oklahoma with my parents. My parents have spent two Thanksgivings at the Buster's house and even though the last time they came was many years ago my dad still talks about the food, especially the oyster stuffing. Damon’s dad always puts together quite the spread. My favorite is my mother in law’s pumpkin pie though. I made sure to have an after breakfast snack of pumpkin pie on Friday just so I could get in one more piece before we left. Since his parents graciously prepared all the food, I was able to read an entire book on Thursday morning. It was a short book but I thought it was pretty lucky that while lots of folks were at work in the kitchen I got to read a book. Hopefully, next year I will be busy chasing around the little Buster. I read the book, Push, which was the inspiration for the new movie 'Precious.' If you have seen the previews for the movie then you know that the book was not an easy read in terms of content. There was inspiration to be found through all the hardships and my favorite part of the book was the process she went through to learn how to read and write. So many of us had parents that read to us when we were young and we started to learn our ABCs in preschool and by middle school reading and writing was just a given. Words are such a powerful tool and for the main character it was the start of gaining her self worth. The book didn’t exactly make for the kind of morning you would get from watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade but it was an amazing story and I’m glad I read it.

Now that Thanksgiving is behind us I am starting to get in the holiday spirit. Although some of my neighbors seem to be going totally overboard. I am all for some sparkly lights and candles in the windows but some of the newer Christmas decorations are just over the top and completely miss the point of Christmas in my opinion. Do you live in a neighborhood where people have those huge blow-up snow globes or Santas or whatever? There is a house that literally has 5 of them, plus candy canes, plus reindeer, plus lights. The house looks like it threw up Christmas. It is just too much. And the blow-up things make this humming noise that totally freaks out my dog. It is just wrong all around. I will now stop complaining and get back to the holiday spirit.

One of my favorite December traditions is the get together we do with our close group of friends here in Columbus. Our first year here we exchanged small gifts with Marty, Kara and Nancy. Then the next year we decided that was silly and I’m not sure whose idea it was (I would like to credit but I don’t believe that would be accurate) but we came up with the plan to buy toys for Toys for Tots instead. It was so much more fun to go to the store and pick out games, basketballs and Barbies for kids instead of stressing out over what to get and how much to spend on each other. We then added a lunch component so now we meet for lunch and then all caravan over to the local TV station and drop off the toys. Over the years Corey joined in and then Don and then Chris and Suzie and now we have little ones in the group too so it just keeps expanding. I look forward to it every year and this will be our 8th year! I highly recommend it!

More referrals keep rolling in for Gladney families and it is super exciting! I am eager for lots more December referrals! There are also several families with December court dates and I REALLY hope they are successful and we get to see more families united.

Last but not least, today is World AIDS Day. My friend, Paige, wrote an amazing post on her blog. You should really go read it. You should also go read Heidi’s post. They both said it way better than I ever could. Peace.