(Luis speaking) Thanksgiving really is my favorite holiday of the year, I would be lying if I said I like Christmas more, but honestly T-day is my top favorite holiday. This has nothing to do with being to just eat delicious food all day and have an excuse to have several servings and have the shape of a turkey by the time you are done eating (although that is a perk of the holiday), but it is always a good reminder of just being thankful of the big and small things in life.
As you already are aware of, this is the year we decided to adopt and it is crazy to think where we were not even a full year ago as we never thought that this would be the path that God would be leading us into. This is something we are and will always be thankful about, how our hearts were changed into hearts of adoption. We always wanted to adopt, but this time last year we were still hoping that maybe those pregnancy tests would come positive, and while seeing negatives almost every month was hard, we are now in peace and are looking forward to what next year will bring.
This year we also decided to do things a little differently than we usually would as we decided to decorate our house for Christmas on Thanksgiving *gasp!* instead. This breaks our tradition of decorating the day after Thanksgiving that we usually have as we were both raised in homes where “you should never start celebrating Christmas before Thanksgiving”, my Mom actually gets really mad at how TV and stores start having Christmas stuff way earlier every year, so growing up really we never started celebrating anything Christmas-y until after Thanksgiving was done and over with. We decided to start early for the first time ever for a few reasons:
- The last couple of years we have been moving around the Holidays. Two years ago we moved out of the apartment we lived in when we first got married (we had outgrowned our descent sized 2 bedroom apartment) and we moved into a 3 bedroom town house where we had planned on spending at least 2-3 years until we decided we were ready to buy a house, but then in 2014 we all the sudden decided the time was now and bought a house and we closed on it a couple days before Christmas (we actually moved into this house on December 26th), so we didn’t want to have to put up all the Christmas decorations only to have to pack them in boxes again, so in a sense we have not decorated for Christmas in 2 years so we couldn’t wait to actually get to do that in our own home.
- I work tomorrow (on Black Friday) as the bank I work for is only closed on Thanksgiving so I will be at work and we didn’t know if we wanted to wait until I got off work or just do it all on Saturday, plus I leave for a week long work training in Albuquerque on Sunday so we didn’t want to be all rushed to put everything up before I left.
- Really there is no #3 as #1 really is the main reason for doing this early.
Another thing we wanted to highlight is the beginning of a new tradition we decided to start as a family, all my wife’s idea. This year my wife and my cousin Ruby decided they wanted to adopt a local fire station and bring them Thanksgiving meal, they found out about this opportunity through a group they belong to on Facebook. Ruby is making the turkey and ham and Danielle is making the sides to go with it and we will be taking it to the fire station for the firefighters that are on duty and don’t get to spend the day with their families to enjoy a good home cooked Thanksgiving meal.
As Danielle and I were enjoying some coffee and pumpkin bread this morning she thought of the great idea of when we have kids (and really starting this year) of spending half of the day serving others and half of the day doing the traditional Thanksgiving stuff. This can include doing the fire station hosting again, serving at our local Soup Kitchen and feeding the needy or something related to the military as well, just really something to give back to the family. She said that this would be a good way to remind them that we shouldn’t take the idea of spending the day with family for granted as there are so many people who don’t get to do so.
I definitely married a good and smart wife!
This is just a little insight into what the Guerreros are doing this Thanksgiving and we wish you all have a happy day with your friends and loved ones!
Love,
The Guerreros
foreverguerrero 