Well, it’s our first Thanksgiving without her. We’re doing ok, getting ready for our traditional Thanksgiving with the family so we’ve been busy all day. So things go ok until we stop moving, then we start to think. The motto me and my sisters have adopted today was ‘Just keep swimming, Just keep swimming!’ Keep moving and we won’t start getting all teary eyed. Except when we watch the Maury Povich ‘Best Tearjerking Episodes’ special.

Yesterday was pretty tough, having the first day of the wake. But it was so awesome to see the amount of people that turned out. We had two rooms and they were entirely filled, we even had people standing out in the hallways. It was definitely a full house. There were so many people that we knew that were there, and people we hadn’t seen in ages that came to pay their respects. A lot of our college friends from U of I came. With Maui being the oldest U of I there, and a freshman in the room, that’s 10 years of U of I people there. Marian even said, ‘It feels like a Ginseng party in here!’ I’m so thankful that so many of my old friends came, and even though I know that they didn’t know what to say, having them there was enough.

When my mom passed away, we all sat together and decided to have the wake on Wednesday and Friday. “If we have it on those days, then we can’t have a Thanksgiving party,” they told us kids. But then we realized that my mom would have wanted us to go on. “OK, we’ll have a get together, but we’ll keep it small and intimate. Just us.” We looked around, and that “us” was the same group that we always celebrate Thanksgiving with anyway - the same 30-ish people.

So we’re moving on, celebrating Thanksgiving, with our fried turkey and pot roast, just like always. But in the back of our minds we’re remembering a great woman that we miss a lot.

So today, I’m thankful for my family, I’m thankful for a husband who has been there for me, I’m thankful for my friends who have supported me, I’m thankful to have been blessed with a good life and to have a mother who loved me and taught me how to love.

And, on a related but separate note, I’m happy that I’m still the Tony Hawk MASTER. Readers may remember long ago that I have not yet met someone who can consistently beat me at Tony Hawk on PS2, and I was worried when my cousins told me that they play Tony Hawk’s Underground. I’ve never played it before, so I thought that I wouldn’t do as well. It’s still got the same button combinations, so I was able to whoop my cousin Marlon’s ass. Yeah. The girl’s still got it. Now I just have to play my cousin Jeff. He’s been a videogame freak since we were little, so he will be a formidable opponent. We’ll see what happens!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!

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