POST SCRIPTS

We will be celebrated Thanksgiving on the 23rd and now again today, the 24th. This is to accomodate a nurse/daughter and a great grandma, so we're having more of the family over to the ranch today around 3 p.m. for our 3rd feed. I like holding Thanksgiving out here in the wide open spaces, it's more traditional. But, it's an increasingly rare scene given the changing times. Small farms and ranches are headed for extinction. Although, it's really the spirit of this time we're celebrating, not the location nor the surroundings. As far as I'm concerned, you could be holding it in a casino, just as long as your family is there to celebrate with you.

So, what were you thankful for this year? Good health is probably the standard answer for most of us and we're thankful for that too, for sure. The older we get, the more importance good health seems to have, doesn't it?

As always, we were extremely thankful to get this years walnut crop harvested, even though we lost about half of it to disease. Well, that's farming and that's really nothing when compared to all the good things that came our way this year! Today's guests will range in age 32 up to 90, yesterday it (we attended two dinners) was 14 to 64..we had to reach down the grandson to hit 14...another sign we're getting older? That's ok, some friends of ours who are a few years older just had their first grand daughter... on Thanksgiving day. Congrats to those new grandparents, Mike and Jan. You know what they say, "When a grandchild is born, so are the grandparents". But, my favorite one is, "The simplest toy, one which even the youngest child can operate, is called... a grandparent." lol

You know, it's a good age to be living in when you can call a loved one halfway around the world on these special days and it sounds like they are right next door. We only had to make a few of those calls this year, so that's another one of those things on our long list of Turkey-day blessings. To sum it up, we're not rich by a long shot and in fact we're probably a little worse off than last year, but we have still our dear friends, our family and our all freedoms that come with being an American. This all goes on that long list of what we have to be thankful for, no wonder it took us 3 Thanksgivings this year to get it all done!

PS Did you know it took 3 days of feasting for the first Thanksgiving, mainly to accomodate the indians who brought most of the meat?