Thanks For Giving

This Thanks­giv­ing is all about the peo­ple in our life. There are many tan­gi­ble things we are thank­ful for such as a roof over our head and din­ner on the table each day. How­ever, this Thanks­giv­ing Vitaliy and I are count­ing our bless­ings based on all the won­der­ful peo­ple in our lives. I think it’s pretty piti­ful when we take things for granted in our lives such as being able to walk or see or hav­ing all of our needs met. But I find it even worse to take the peo­ple in our lives for granted because when we do that we are also hurt­ing another human being. So let us share some of the folks we would like to remind our­selves to be espe­cially thank­ful for this year, peo­ple who we may for­get to thank for giv­ing to us.

Our pas­tors — Mark, Rob and Justin. How often do we take our pas­tors for granted? How often do we actu­ally thank them for their hard work or pray for them? I am start­ing this post off with our pas­tors because for Vitaliy and I there is noth­ing more impor­tant in our life than our walk with Jesus. Each one of these men has given to us in ways that will have eter­nal con­se­quence. We are thank­ful for their integrity before God and oth­ers. We are extremely grate­ful for their dili­gent study of God’s word and for shar­ing their knowl­edge with us in order to help us grow spir­i­tu­ally. And lastly, we are blessed by their love and sup­port for our family.

Our clients. Each one of our clients has given us the abil­ity to do what we love. This Jan­u­ary 1, we will be cel­e­brat­ing our one year anniver­sary of start­ing our own busi­ness and each one of our clients has helped to make it all pos­si­ble. They have each given us the honor of pho­tograph­ing them­selves and their loved ones, but they have also gone out and spread the word about us. For both of these, we are truly grateful.

Our land­lords. I know a lot of peo­ple have hor­ror sto­ries with their land­lords or maybe they look at the rela­tion­ship with their land­lord as just a busi­ness trans­ac­tion. Nei­ther of these is true for us. We are blessed with amaz­ing land­lords that care about us, are trust­wor­thy, and are now our friends. If an email is sent out to address a main­te­nance prob­lem, it won’t end with­out a thor­ough debrief on the lat­est NCIS episode. We are thank­ful to be in good hands.

Our car­pool fam­i­lies. I remem­ber Leska’s first semes­ter at school four years ago. Vitaliy had to drive her to and from school every sin­gle day, which with­out traf­fic, is about 30 min­utes each way. It was a dif­fi­cult time, but God heard our prayers and blessed us with won­der­ful car­pools each year since. It is now Leska’s senior year and we once again have a won­der­ful car­pool made up of fam­i­lies who are happy to give and sac­ri­fice for the ben­e­fit of oth­ers. We are absolutely thankful.

I could eas­ily go on about many oth­ers, but this post could get really long really fast. These are four groups of peo­ple that we do not want to take for granted. Thank you to each per­son men­tioned, we are sin­cerely thank­ful for the ways that you bless our fam­ily. Is there some­one in your life that you’ve been tak­ing for granted? Leave me a com­ment below and tell me who they are and why you’re thank­ful for them. Let’s keep a thank­ful heart more than once a year!

How could I for­get to thank the amaz­ing Shee­han fam­ily for allow­ing us to take care of their home and won­der­ful dog Cal­lie each year? Though they con­sider us help­ing them out, cel­e­brat­ing Thanks­giv­ing in their home each year is by far our favorite way to cel­e­brate. Here are a few of our favorite moments from our Thanks­giv­ing this year.

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Vitaliy and I decided to cook brunch for every­one to start the day since din­ner wouldn’t be served until the evening. We made sweet and savory crepes and there wasn’t a crepe left when we were done eat­ing. Yes, we even like to rep­re­sent our favorite brands while cook­ing. My apron is Anthro­polo­gie and his is In-N-Out.

Vitaliy is King of the Crepes!

After brunch, a Jenga tour­na­ment started. I only watched because these folks were brutal!

My poor mother! She was the only girl play­ing and they totally took advan­tage of her. In her defense, this was the only match she lost. Unfor­tu­nately for her, it was the only tum­ble captured.

Our Thanks­giv­ing spread — and we had no turkey! We had a mix­ture of dif­fer­ent Ukrain­ian and Amer­i­can dishes. It was delish!

These are all the peo­ple who made our day absolutely wonderful.

Thanks­giv­ing night was all about paja­mas, apple crisp, and Home Alone. As you can see, love and hap­pi­ness was inter­spersed amongst it all.

The day after Thanks­giv­ing, I got to wake up to this bun­dle of joy. I wouldn’t mind wak­ing up to him every day.

I will end the post with a ques­tion. Who drools more — babies or dogs?? Happy Thanks­giv­ing everyone!