Thankful

I am thankful - for a lot of things. Over the past few days I was blessed to have my family here for the holiday. There was this fruit centerpiece thing that I found in a cookbook at my daughter's house. Something compelled me to want to make this thing even though there would be plenty of other food for Thanksgiving. I learned that my girls think I am capable of doing something that I wasn't really sure about myself. As I was constructing what I felt would be a monstrosity, my girls both assured me that it was looking fine. Their words were precious to me. I was also in "Grandma Heaven" as it were. We ate, we visited, we ate, we played games, we ate... you get the picture. Somehow, having the little ones around gives a whole new perspective to things. I can never get enough cuddle time with my grandkids, so I took advantage of every opportunity (except when they went to Bounce Magic - it's just too noisy!!). Our final activity with the kids for this whirlwind weekend was making a gingerbread house. You know, the kind you buy prebaked with the candies from, oh, 2 years ago (maybe). We added some fruity loopy cereal to the candy assortment just because we could. Grandpa "constructed" the house and the kids did the decorating with the help of Aunt Holly. I am really proud of myself because, as a Mom, I always wanted everything to be perfect and would instruct my children in the placement of the candies, etc. - whereas, now that I'm a Grandma, I've learned to let go of the "just-so" complex, and we all really enjoyed the decorating. Did it look like the picture on the box? Well.....