Baking a pumpkin pie with your three year old niece, and other small joys...

Today, I will spend Thanksgiving with my pregnant sister and her family. Since moving here, our bond has strengthened in ways I couldn't have imagined, but have always hoped for. I love being near my nieces and I love that my daughter can grow up with her cousins.

This year has been so full of good and necessary change -- and has brought so many blessings and changed so many relationships that I find it difficult to articulate my feelings.

I am so lucky for the people I have in my life; I find that family is more important than ever, and make a constant effort to be available and involved despite distance and differences.

Thanksgiving is an action holiday; it's more important to actively thank the people in your life than to tout it to the whole Internet. That said, I'm going to snuggle up next to my husband, feel my daughter move, and get ready to spend the day with people who are irreplacable to me.