This is the time of year I feel like I should be reflecting on gratitude. I am not a huge sentimental holiday person. My husband and I created traditions for us and our kids stemming from mostly pagan rituals. I hate being Pigeon holed into anything. Holidays have always been more about obligation. Reflecting back the best Thanksgivings were at my Grandparents house in Queens when we all got together. That awful fruit cup, the ham and the games after dinner. Watching my siblings eating potato balls until they burst. My grandma's German Christmas cookies. Trying to hang out with my brother and my cousin John while they laid in the dark listening to scary radio shows. Making everyone play "Sink the Titanic" with me.

Later my parents divorced, my grandparents moved to Florida, then Mom and I moved to Georgia. Holidays were not the same for a while. Then for a few magical years (before I married and had kids) my moms house became the place for all my friends to gather for Thanksgiving. Those few short years were some of the best. After that holidays felt like a forced commitment. I longed for the days of gathering at my grandparents house. Every holiday I felt obligated to go to my moms since everyone else lived far away and no one traveled for the holidays. We were never that family that celebrated together. I was, and I guess still am, jealous of those friends that have good relationships with extended families. We just were never that close. Distance and divorce divided us up and discontent keeps us that way.

What I am most grateful for are the friends I have made and their families that have taken me and mine in like we are one of their own. Dave, Julia and Bob...Lisa's parents, have provided so many fond holiday memories. Both Brigitte and Jarod's families and siblings have treated me like another kid. Craig's mom was like a second mom to me in high school. My husbands family has always been so loving and wonderful to us even though they hardly knew me at all. These are the extended family I am so grateful for. I have repeated over and over how lucky I am to have fantastic friends, but even more so are the friends whose family became the family I always wished I had. That is what I am grateful for this Thanksgiving.