Thanksgiving

I wasn't really sure how I would feel this past week with being away from my family for Thanksgiving but all in all things went really well. I guess its never easy being separated from family on holidays but you just have to adjust and realize that the holidays will be different but different isn't always bad, just different. This Thanksgiving was different, thats for sure. For my first time ever, I was not at the lake house celebrating with my family but thankfully was able to still be apart of their thanksgiving via Skype.

Obviously, Aussies do not celebrate Thanksgiving but since there are many Americans here my cousin organized a Thanksgiving lunch for after church. Their young adults group has done this for several years now and I was really thankful to be apart of it. We got together Saturday night and did lots of cooking of all the Thanksgiving favorites: sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, stuffing, pumpkin pie, etc. Earlier in the week when we were working on the menu we were at the store and discovered turkeys here are super expensive! I believe we saw a TINY 2 kilo (4.4 lbs) turkey that would maybe feed 10 people that cost $45. That was not going to work out so great since we had 30 people who planned on coming for lunch. So my cousins started talking about other options for our meat, sausages, chicken, etc. I'm not going to lie I was pouting a little and Aussies just don't understand...it just wouldn't be Thanksgiving without a turkey! My cousin was trying to keep it a surprise from me that a friend of hers who is a great cook was making the turkey, well she couldn't keep it a secret anymore and ended up telling me at the grocery store while we were shopping. I was so excited! I got to spend day with some family and friends, enjoyed some turkey, pumpkin pie, sweet tea and I even downloaded the Macy's Thanksgiving parade. Even though I missed being with my family back home it was a pretty perfect Thanksgiving.

I have so much to be thankful for this year. The short list....i'm thankful for this little adventure in Australia and new beginnings.