From Here to There: Golf-Cart Rides and Sheet Metal Shops: Exactly What I'm Forever Thankful For

As you get older, sometimes you have to spend holidays away from your family. Maybe you're just too far away to come home. Maybe you're obligated to spend the holidays with your significant other's family. There are so many reasons people can't make it home for the holidays, and this year I'm so thankful that I've made it home to my family every year since I've been in college. I can't imagine a holiday without them.

In the times I have visited other people's family gatherings, it always shocks me that it's mostly just imediate family hanging around the house. In our family, I can always expect any given cousin (from 2nd to 4th and anywhere in between) from either side to just show up, and I love it although that's usually more frequent at Christmas time. Either way, you can always expect lots of laughs, little ones, enough food to feed two armies and a cup of coffee or a Diet Coke ready and waiting whenever you need it.

Yesterday I sat in my Nana and Pops' kitchen looking at a cookbook/scrapbook that my cousin Laura made for my Pops' and my great uncles when my great-grandma "Honey" passed away in 2005. I couldn't help but get teary as I read. Pictures of everyone crammed into her tiny kitchen, all gathered around the table filled my blurry view. I was just a little kid back when they were taken...happy to eat whatever she cooked and sad to see that Uncle Mark had commandeered the TV to watch Sunday football once again. I was Honey's first great-grandchild. I was always with Honey; as far back as I can remember there were trips to McDonald's, the Dollar store and crisp sticks of spearmint gum. Making cut-out cookies, rhubarb crunch, banana nut bread and any sort of crazy cooking experiment she was patient enough to let me try brought us together. Try as I might, I just can't quite recreate her recipes. I guess it just comes with time, but I'm so thankful for my time with her. Even though I was very young, I cherished my time with her and I miss her and think of her every day, especially around the holidays. Her place at the dinner table usually has a little one in it, but she would've wanted it that way. And even though she's not here to celebrate our large, boisterous family with us, I know for a fact that she is in everyone's heart. It was Honey who insisted on being together - even if we had to pile into each other's laps to all fit around the table (now we can barely fit in one house)! It's hard to put into words everything that she meant to our family, but I know we all think of her when we hold a hot cup of coffee with sugar, or bite into a stick of spearmint gum...and most definitely when we sit around the dinner table, try to recreate her flawless recipes, and reminisce over old family stories that will just never get old. When I think of family, these are the things I think of.

So this year if you ask me what I'm thankful for, this is what I'll tell you in the most cliche-way possible: family. I'm thankful for my family, every single part of it. I'm thankful for the good times and the bad. I'm thankful for our successes and our failures. I'm thankful for golf-cart rides and sheet-metal shops and walnut-tree-climbing and snowman building and cooking in a tiny kitchen and davenports and chocolate cake drenched in milk. I'm thankful for faith through pain, for being tough and strong when things get hard but not being afraid to cry when things just seem too hard because we've all been there. I'm thankful for the faith and hope and love that my family effortlessly passed down to me. I'm thankful for the memories I've made with my family in the past, and I'm thankful for the memories I'll make with my family in the future. My family had molded me into the person I've become and I couldn't be more grateful for them. They might be just a little loud, and they might have some of the hottest tempers I've ever encountered (myself included), but they've got the biggest hearts around. I'm thankful for my family, each and every one of them, and I always, always will be.