Round Robin Challenge: What you are Thankful for

The challenge this week is What you are Thankful for. That's an easy one; I'm thankful I've grown so much closer to my cousin, Maribeth. She has a blog which she calls Dackel Princess where she writes about her life with her hubby in NH, her dogs, Greta (a "dackel" or as we know them, a daschund, about to have her first litter!) and Fritz (a white german shepherd), their fruit trees and garden in the summer, skiing in the winter and assorted other topics. Check her out sometime, I think you'll like her :-)

I have so many good memories of growing up with Maribeth; she lived on Cape Cod and our families would get together each summer for a couple of weeks, and usually on Thanksgiving and Christmas. She's a year younger than me, but that never mattered. We were happiest on the beach, or riding our bikes, or playing with our Barbies...at least until we were 12 or 13 or so. That's when we started to grow apart a bit. I started wanting to do things with my friends during the summers, but still...every Thanksgiving and Christmas (except when I lived in Japan) were spent together.

Now, I think we're trying to set up our own tradition of spending Thanksgiving & Christmas together; this picture, in fact, is from our Thanksgiving celebration, which as you can see with filled with food (and those were just the appetizers!).

Anyway...long story short...I'm thankful for Maribeth :-)