Family Time, and the New T- Shirt Champ

Featured in our 2008 shirt from L to R: Boone, Zinny, Rooney, and Cayenne- all chasing the turkey. Jon drew the original picture by hand!

The 4th annual Turpin Turkey Trot has come and gone. We have a new t-shirt winner: Jon Coker. His shirt was wonderful! The ante is getting upped around here every year, and my shirt clearly ranks in 4th place now. By the way, I am saving all of the t-shirts so in 20 years I can make a quilt of our turkey trot shirts.

Bekah and Zinny on the Turpin Turkey Trot. Lots of smiles!

Dave and Rooney struggled to stay focused during the Turkey Trot. Rooney couldn't understand why we were walking and not running.

I am thankful that I have a family that spends time together. Since my granny passed away several years ago, we have had to work hard as a family to come up with new traditions and keep our family close. And sometimes, as Gina and I have discussed on one of our long runs, keeping your family close takes work and effort. You have to make the effort to meet up- make the effort to keep traditions going- make the effort to create a loving environment.

Everyone got two lottery scratch off tickets. Jon, Bekah, and Dave won something. I was left empty handed, along with my mom and papa.

Damie and Bekah were the main chefs fort the afternoon. He were are dancing and singing in the kitchen...our love's in jeopardy, baby, oooohhhhh.....by Greg Kihn.

Which brings me to my last thought. My post on children, while supposed to be a funny commentary on facebook and the defined age of 30, seemed to spark a lot of different emotions from readers. Rest assured, my friends, that I honor and love all of you with children. I think children are a wonderful gift. Dave and I have weekly, if not daily discussions on planning our own family. We are waiting for our time- our sign that we are in the right place. We firmly believe that we will know when the time is right for us- IF it is right for us. If we just listen to our inner voices, the answers will come to us about our own family. So, we are calm and happy at this time to just enjoy each other and our puppies. Dave is my family, and I am his, and we realize there is no rush. :)

And, of course I also don't need to explain our choices about family planning on a blog. I really also can't pinpoint anything about my decisions that make me selfish, either. So let's move on.

To all of the wonderful moms out there - Happy Thanksgiving, and enjoy this time with your beautiful family and kids. To all my friends sans children, Happy Thanksgiving to you too and enjoy the times with your family, loved ones, and kitties/puppies. And to my granny in heaven, if you can read this, I can't even cook remotely like you. I sure do wish I had paid more attention when you were showing me how to cook instead of just being the taste tester every 5 minutes. We sure do miss your chicken and dumplings and homemade pies.