Thanksgiving

I couldn't have been more thankful for this year's Thanksgiving holiday. Madison was able to go with me to North Carolina to meet up with my family at my grandmother's mountain home.



Thanksgiving at her NC home is like going to summer camp. There's 200 acres of property to explore. The property is lined by the New River, which is one of the oldest rivers in the world. She also has a small pond, a waterfall, and lots of hills and valleys. Last year she had a two story playhouse built. This year, she added a wrap around porch to the second level and a slide leading down to a fort and another slide from the fort to the ground. Go-carts are zooming around and around, kids are bouncing on the trampoline. There's fishing, shooting, boating, swinging, wrestling, weanie roasting, cooking, eating, laughing . . . you name it.



On our last night there, I was woken at 2:30 a.m. by what I thought was a critter crawling on my neck. Turns out it was the small hand of my beloved six year old. She was sharing a pull out couch with two cousins who abandoned her that night and she found herself alone, and therefore found herself standing at my bedside. I gladly opened the blanket and welcomed her in to share this tiny twin size bed. We were snuggled close and after ten minutes or so realized that neither of us could get back to sleep. So in the still, quiet night, we whispered so softly and sweetly (as there was another cousin in the same room as us). The conversation that night between mother and daughter in a whispered tone was a moment in time that I will hold onto forever. It was a perfect end to a perfect Thanksgiving vacation.