Thanksgiving!

This weekend is the weekend when people all across Canada and many Canadians abroad are giving thanks for the many gifts, blessings, things, etc in their lives. For our family it has been a Thanksgiving with particular challenges as mum, the main organizer, chief cook and bottle washer, is well to put it simply, useless! It has been a struggle the past few weeks for all of us as I spend many hours in bed trying to keep the little bit of food I can stomach from coming back up again. There is joy to be found in this, however, in that my illness is not long term...so to speak...it will hopefully only last another couple of months, and at most eight, at which time we will get to meet the newest member of our family!!!! The great gift of motherhood is one that I am truly thankful for, and as painful as this period is, there is always a light at the end of the tunnel, the new baby who is so longed for by all of us.

For the first time in their lives my children are being given the opportunity, much to their frustration, to truly learn what service means. They have had to take on responsibilities in our home that have been up to now pretty much left to mum, and to their credit they are trying?! Well sort of....! I wish I could say that I had trained them well, but alas I had not. House work has never been my strength, growing up in a home with a working mom, for whom housework was always an afterthought, I was not well trained myself. But in the past few weeks I have come to realize what a disservice I have done to my children by not starting them on a regular chore routine a long time ago. The up side is it is never too late....right?

Anyway our eldest daughter has in a short period of time become quite the cook. I am very impressed with how well she has taken to her new role as the family meal maker, and with some guidance from me she has prepared some wonderful meals, from chicken pot pie to stir fries to tortiere! None of which I learned how to make until I was already married.

We have two daughters and four sons. Our eldest and youngest are girls and four brothers in between, ranging in age from almost 12 to five. I don't know how many of you have boys, but ours seem to be selectively blind much of the time!!!! It amazes me how little they see, and how when I ask them if their chore is completed there are still things littered all over the place that they, I have come to realized,  really do not see!

So this Thanksgiving our house is even in more disarray than usual, mum is in bed, the boys are trying to get their room tidy and the house in some semblance of order and my big daughter is making stuffing and traditional Thanksgiving turkey! I cannot remember a Thanksgiving that I have been more acutely aware of all that I have been Blessed with over the years. And in my useless state I am most thankful for a loving and infinitely more patient husband than I realized, six beautiful children who are working so hard to serve the Lord as they serve their family, good friends who have taken pitty on our family and brought us meals and pray for us daily, and our Heavenly Father who in his wisdom has allowed me to become so incapacitated so that we as a family could come to realized what service, charity and family is really all about!

Here is hoping that everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving! May God Bless you and keep you!

Dominique, mom of seven souls, and current lame duck!