Category: Thankful Thursday

• For getting our entire LOA packet completed and Fed Ex’d back to our agency. They have done their part and sent it on to the Department of Homeland Security for America to accept her joining our family.
• For all the love and sweet words we have heard about Dani.
• For how great our agency is in making the next steps goof-proof.
• For all the fun we have been having celebrating Christmas time.
• For the fun we had celebrating Bayli graduating from North Texas.
• For Tahni spending time with us last weekend. The girls had a blast with their aunt.

I am thankful for our new dryer. No more SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK!!!!! Our old one was 14 years old and Mike had fixed it a few times, but this time it only lasted about a month. The new dryer is wonderful and gets the clothes dried so fast! During ICEPOCALYPSE I think I managed to try out all the settings.

My friend Jennifer posted this idea which she saw on Pinterest. I decided that was the perfect fit for our family and we started right away. It was fun to add to the pumpkin each night and our houseguests added theirs too. We can’t save the pumpkin so here is the list in the order it was yelled out to me.

We are thankful for Dani, beds, church, toys, cookies, pumpkins, mommy, a family, a dad and a mom, for Mike making me laugh, a good job, money, water, food, Jesus, 2 great kids, a home, crayons and paper, A/C and heater, friends, clothes and panties, books, guns, The Bible, to be homeschooled, color wonder, giraffy/oscar/baby, for my sister Nadia, bathtub, Grammie, for learning through tough times, Minli, giraffes, trees, pillow pets, chocolate, the library, electricity, computers, having 3 pottys in the house, crafts, our playhouse, for Amelie, ice cream, for Jared, for Michelle, milk, ice cream sundaes, houseguests, big sisters, for my brain, almonds, Jared’s awesomeness, bowls and cups, Bubba and Laura, shoes, power tools, boots, Jared’s planning committee, for my nieces Nadia and Amelie, for my awesome brother in law, salt, Kaye and Darwin, insurance, World Vision, for Daddy growing a beard, for very good hosts and Michelle’s family, modern medicine, glad dinosaurs were alive so I could learn about science, a happy family, our co-op, jokes, Fort Worth Zoo, good cereal, paper to color, Hard Eight food, for Mommy being my teacher, scissors, street tacos, small fingers, rain, picture frames, “solve it tips” for Lego Batman, for “sounding boards”, pumpkin pie, pez, food, quiet, video games, for my sister, God, 10 commandments, Mommy having contacts and glasses to see better, Jesus dying for us, God’s creation in flowers and trees, doctors, TV, news and weather report, Christmas music, bathing suits,movies, Christmas decorations, crescent rolls, Thanksgiving, tilapia, spaghetti and

for curbside trash pick up!

• We hope you have a peaceful and blessed Thanksgiving.  It’s been 150 years since President Lincoln made Thanksgiving an official holiday with an official day, so instead of my usual thankful Thursday I thought it would be fun to post some history and President Lincoln’s proclamation.

Washington, D.C.
October 3, 1863

This is the proclamation which set the precedent for America’s national day of Thanksgiving. During his administration, President Lincoln issued many orders similar to this. For example, on November 28, 1861, he ordered government departments closed for a local day of thanksgiving.

Sarah Josepha Hale, a 74-year-old magazine editor, wrote a letter to Lincoln on September 28, 1863, urging him to have the “day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival.” She explained, “You may have observed that, for some years past, there has been an increasing interest felt in our land to have the Thanksgiving held on the same day, in all the States; it now needs National recognition and authoritive fixation, only, to become permanently, an American custom and institution.”

Prior to this, each state scheduled its own Thanksgiving holiday at different times, mainly in New England and other Northern states. President Lincoln responded to Mrs. Hale’s request immediately, unlike several of his predecessors, who ignored her petitions altogether. In her letter to Lincoln she mentioned that she had been advocating a national thanksgiving date for 15 years as the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book. George Washington was the first president to proclaim a day of thanksgiving, issuing his request on October 3, 1789, exactly 74 years before Lincoln’s.

The document below sets apart the last Thursday of November “as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise.” According to an April 1, 1864, letter from John Nicolay, one of President Lincoln’s secretaries, this document was written by Secretary of State William Seward, and the original was in his handwriting. On October 3, 1863, fellow Cabinet member Gideon Welles recorded in his diary how he complimented Seward on his work. A year later the manuscript was sold to benefit Union troops.

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln