 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
For almost the full duration of our marriage, Emily and I have celebrated Thanksgiving on Eleuthera. Thanksgiving is perhaps Emily’s favorite holiday and she routinely saves up and spends for a rich and bountiful feast around a table with friends and family giving thanks.
Throughout our past returns back to the island since 2016 we have celebrated Thanksgiving on Spanish Wells. The manse where we stay is large enough to accommodate a couple of families and it has been a great spot to carve a turkey and spoon up some cranberry pie.
However, this year Emily was insistent that we celebrate Thanksgiving at our friends Robin and Julius Rankin’s house in Savannah Sound. All of this sounded fine to me, but for her it would mean boxes of supplies shipped all over to Eleuthera and then hauled up the island. And being the industrious woman that she is, she got everything either cooked or started and then packaged up for Rankin Family Thanksgiving.
We have been blessed to celebrate Thanksgiving with the Rankins for many years, and it’s so much fun to see how we’ve all grown over the years… especially our kids. Not only have our families grown larger, but the kids themselves are so much bigger! There’s one picture of Micah and Javana that they were good sports to take showing how much they’ve grow up in a decade.
As we passed around the roles and pecan pie, each person from each family shared something they were thankful for. It was so nice to hear both the variety of gratitude and the common threads of family and health and friends that we are all annually grateful for. Especially for our friends who, even though we don’t see one another as often, still feel like family.