Overdue Thanksgiving Post

I've been thinking some deep thoughts this week, hence the lack of posting. We've also had the whole family home most of the week, with Wyatt's Thanksgiving vacation over tomorrow. It's been fabulous having everyone around, and blogging hasn't been high on my list of things to do. I thought I'd catch up with a couple things tonight, and maybe write something longer later this week.

I had a couple posts on MMB this week. You can find them here:

Our Marriage Begat a Fabulous Cake
Changing Perspectives


We had a great Thanksgiving. Once again, it was spent doing something entirely different. I think our lifestyle is not particularly conducive to building traditions. Or maybe our tradition is to do something new every year. Can that even be a tradition? Who knows, but we went swimming this year at the Blue Hole. Having spent most of my life in a much colder climate, the idea of swimming outside in something unheated was completely foreign to me. Until this year. The water was perfect, although we were a little afraid it would be cold when we got there. We had the place to ourselves for the most part, although a couple tour groups came through near the end of our stay.

We followed our swimming with another first: Thanksgiving in the dining hall. Curious, yes, but it was actually pretty good. And they had fresh strawberries. And kiwis. And real mashed potatoes. Oh, and I didn't have to do any of the work. Doing a turkey would have meant no Blue Hole trip, and since this is one of the rare times the dining hall has really good fare, we figured it would be silly not to go. It was somewhat weird to to sit in a mess hall setup and eat our Thanksgiving meal on trays (they did decorate the place, at least), but we saw friends and it was better than just doing our own thing at home.

The only downside was the dessert, which seemed a rather lame selection of formerly frozen, boxed pies. I ended up with vanilla ice cream and strawberries, a treat I miss very much, so all was well on that front. The next day, I made eggnog ice cream out of the last of our eggnog, and it was amazing, so I don't think anyone ended up feeling sad about the lame dessert.

Finally, I wanted to add a short list of some of the things I've been thankful over the last year:

• A year spent together. Even on duty nights, Oliver is home. The only nights I've had to sleep alone were a couple weeks he was on midwatch, but since he was home during the day, it wasn't even close to the same as the boat schedule we've endured most of our married life.
• Wyatt is finally adjusting to school, and loving it. He's made friends and is learning a lot. With a couple exceptions, he's doing mostly first grade work, and we are going to consider skipping him a grade when we return to the States.
• I'm so grateful for how much I've grown as a person. I've been faced with a lot of challenges this year that I did not expect, and would not have had if we hadn't moved here. It's been an incredible opportunity to learn more about myself, my marriage, my role as a mother, and a lot of other things too numerous to mention here. 
• I'm grateful we are finally feeling comfortable here. We had a rough start, most of which I have not spent time dwelling on in this blog, but suffice it to say that it took some serious adjusting over the first eight or so months. Some of it was expected, some of it not so much. It's okay now, though, and I appreciate that more than I can express.
• Finally, I am grateful for the opportunity to move into a double-wide trailer. It's pretty much the best housing you can hope for here, and while we wavered a bit as to if we wanted to do all the work of moving, it was completely worth it. We no longer feel all crammed in, and I have finally lost that weird sense of vacation living that I could not shake in the much smaller trailer with it's thin walls.

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all! I hope yours was as enjoyable as ours!