Thanksgiving

For the past four days everything has seemed right in the world.  Our lives seemed whole again as the one piece missing returned.  The looks and sounds of happiness.  The now ever so special sounds of the friends voices, the laughter of so many children fills the house.  The sounds so familiar for the last eight years and so painfully absent the last two months.  For the past four days everything has had the comfortable peace and joy that comes from being with friends so close they are family.

Our friends the Parays arrived on Tuesday and returned to Florida today.  The words are hard to find to express how thankful we are for the time spent together. 

Mae and I had so many wonderful hours talking, picking up right where we left off, as if we had only been together the day before.  There is something so different about talking in person than over the phone.  We were even able to slip away and go to lunch as I showed her around our new corner of the world, hoping, not very secretly, that it might someday be her corner of the world too. 

Chris was blessed to be able to work from home.  This is how Mae and I got to get away but it had the added benefit for him of being around all the happy sounds of the children.  He too has so greatly missed our friends.  He took them for long walks, played soccer and football. 

The cold never stopped the children.  They played outside, shot the BB-gun, explored the woods, found crayfish, got muddy in the stream, and fully utilized the space in the house in active games of tag and hide-n-seek. 

We celebrated Sophia's Birthday early on Wednesday and made a yummy traditional Thanksgiving spread on Thursday, followed by the requested act of pumpkin carving. 

Now its time to figure out when our next meeting will be and I'm sure once it is decided we will all begin the countdown till we are whole and together again.