Texas Thanksgiving

Somehow, after a lovely couple of months of beautiful, crisp, cool fall weather here in Boston, it seems strange to go home to an 80 degree Thanksgiving.

I experienced today just a few of the perks of living in a place with multiple seasons:
1) (realizing) the frog pond at the Common has been transformed into an outdoor ice-skating rink
2) (chuckling at) fat squirrels that scurry out of trash bins and over the ground, with white bellies and thick, winter coats of fur
3) (feeling the) exhilirating rush of blood and heat back to your chilled cheeks upon re-entering your warm apartment building (kind of the opposite of the lovely rush of cool on your body from the blasting AC in a sweltering Texas summer)

Still, I'm thankful that I even get to go home to see family, friends, my house, and my hometown. The Lord has blessed me so richly.
I like this quote from Abraham Lincoln:
"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own."
I read it in an article by a priest who wrote, "If I were pressed to reduce the meaning of all religion to one word, that word would be 'gratitude.' "

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! :) THANK YOU for reading my blog!