Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Ours was very enjoyable. Not only did we get to get away for 2 family parties, but we also celebrated our daughters 4th birthday, which fell on Thanksgiving day this year. She is growing up so quickly, and loves playing mommy. Most of the day she is found walking around the house with a purse or two and pretending. This year I made her a purse cake. :)

As I mentioned before, this last year has been a bit overwhelming at times, but it has also been filled with blessings. I think sometimes it takes seeing how great your needs are to see how great your blessings are. We have had countless blessings throughout the year through friends, family, and even people we are just getting to meet. When we got home last night from our second Thanksgiving party, I was reminded again of the Lord's provision and the blessings He sends through others.

To back track a bit, Wednesday night Ethan was going to come home from work and get ready to leave early Thursday morning for our time away. Getting ready to leave meant unloading 3000 lbs of pig feed from our trailer, getting the chores done to be gone for 2 days, and then heading to the woods to cut firewood - of which we had just enough left for a small fire to warm the house that night. All to be done before the winter sun set.

Well, when there are nights like this things never go as planned, and this held true on Wednesday. Before Ethan even got home there was a pig emergency. (Hopefully there will be a post on this later in the week.) Ethan spent the rest of the evening with a sow. By the time he got things squared away with her to be able to leave for two days the sun was well gone. We went to bed that night with chores done to last 2 days but no new firewood for when we got back or feed unloaded.

Thankfully, my dad has wood so while we were visiting we squeezed in a nights worth into our over packed van. We could burn that the night we got home, and then Ethan could gather a bit the next day to get us through until he could really go cut again.

Well, when we pulled into our drive last night we were greeted with a surprise. We hadn't let anyone know we were out of wood, but while we were gone someone had dropped off a pile of logs. So today Ethan just had to cut some of it to size and can focus on some of the bigger priorities around here. (Funny thing how wood to keep warm turns into a small priority on the farm, but that's the way it goes sometimes.)

Hopefully next year we will be able to start the winter with a woodpile. Like I said though, sometimes when you have bigger needs you see how great your blessings are. I hope that your blessings are evident as well this Thanksgiving!