The turkey’s in the oven, the house is (relatively) clean, and there’s a lull before the making of side dishes begins, so I thought I’d pop in and give thanks to a few people.

I’m thankful my husband and the Tall Kid stopped what they were in the middle of to join the Short Kid and I in watching Santa at the end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade, even though it’s silly to them. They know it’s incredibly, inexplicably important to me and they didn’t even roll their eyes.

I’m thankful the Short Kid brings unabashed joy into our lives and doesn’t hesitate to hold his nose and belt out …me, I want a hula hooooooop… just because it makes me happy.

I’m thankful for my family and my friends. I’m thankful you don’t have to have even met people in real life for them to be the best friends you’ve ever had. I’m thankful that, two years after losing my dad, my stepmother and I are still as close as we ever were. And I’m thankful she’s finding much-deserved happiness again with a wonderful man. I’m so thankful my youngest sister came through the H1N1-pneumonia double-whammy okay.

And I’m incredibly thankful for you. Everybody who chats with me here or on Twitter or anywhere else. I’m very shy and a bit of a homebody, and it’s a little ironic that the reason we ATV is that I convinced my husband he needed something of his own to do. While it was wonderful that he worked hard and spent all his free time with us, people need something of their own once in a while. (Of course then he went and got us all machines, but the snowmobiliing became “his” time.)

He asked me what “my” time was, and that’s you guys. You’re my night out with my friends and my morning coffee chat. You’re fun to hang out with and you’ve been a shoulder when I’ve desperately needed one. You’ve celebrated my successes, shared my childrens’ milestones and prayed for my husband when we needed all the prayers we could get.

I would be so very lonely without all of you and I just wanted to stop and let you know how important you really are to me.

Now…crap, I didn’t take the mint pie out of the freezer!