"Thanksgiving memories" and such

Monday was a very busy day for me, I have to say, busy for me is a good thing. I met Brenda at church this morning, we had to set up for the dinner that our WMU group was hosting, our special guest were the ladies from the Crossover Ministry. For those who do not know the Crossover Ministry is a Christian based drug/alcohol rehabilitation progam. We are very fortunate to have this ministry in our town. I was so encouraged by the testimony of the ladies last night. The life change was so evident in each one of their lives. Our decorations for the dinner was "fall themed" and I needed some candy corn and candy pumpkins to put on the tables, can you believe I had to go to three different stores before I could find any? If I was looking for candy canes, I'd had NO problem, they were every where. Whatever happen to Thanksgiving? It seems to be skipped over each year. We can find lots of jack-o-lanters, ghost, skeltons, and black cats in every store shortly after July 4. By the first of Novemember we have snowmen, santa's, reindeer, candy canes, Christmas trees, Christmas lights and 1000's of other Christmas decorations, but NO Thanksgiving decorations. Whatever happened to Thanksgiving decorations, like the pilgrim's, indian's, turkey's and pumpkins? I'm sorry for boring you with all this talk about Thanksgiving being skipped over, but I happen to like Thanksgiving. I can't wait for the turkey and dressing, Hannah's favorite "chicken and dumplings", sweet potato casserole, turnips and cornbread, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie, Adam's favorite "boiled cookies", and Meredith's favorite "pink salad". "Pink salad" got it's name from Meredith. When Meredith was little my mother would fix this buttermilk salad at Thanksgiving and Meredith could not say buttermilk, so she named it "pink salad". We had some great times at my mother's on Thanksgiving, she loved to cook all our favorite food dishes "favorites" as she called. I miss her so much more around the holidays. When the kids were small we lived away but we always came home for Thanksgiving. My two brother's families and my sister's family, we'd all gather at mother's around ten in the morning and the guys would sit around and talk, while the girls would help Mother get the food ready to put on the table and the kids would "practice" football. We would eat around noon and after eating lunch we'd go sit on her big front porch and watch the kids "play" flag football. All nine kids would play their hearts out. Those were some GREAT TIMES!!