What do we have to be grateful for?!!!

Even if you are a glancer, you know a skimmer of news, in the past week and maybe even a lot of the past year it is so easy to think "what do we have to be grateful for?".  

After all there are atrocities, big/small or somewhere in the middle, happening all the time.  Our politicians sound either like snake oil salesmen with a touch of preacher revivalist thrown in or wait what they didn't or don't read reports unless the report is giving data that only confirms what they think.  There is still death and disease and a host of really ludicrous conspiracy theories on these things, our lack of science understanding is frightening.  The environment is compromised unless it's not because if I don't understand it then it is not true, see previous point.  

What do we have to be grateful for?  I mean from everything you see on most media; races hate each other, religions are battling each other while of course telling everyone how theirs is the one of love and of course the one to follow, whoever you love someone may have a problem with it.   

Yet here we are in the week of my favorite holiday - favorite, ever one of those things that I think every country should adopt (Canada already does I know) and regardless of what you think of it's origins it is a great holiday.  A GREAT HOLIDAY people.

Here is what I have to be grateful for and what I want my kids to take away from this holiday

1) I am grateful for every day - I learn something from every day, maybe it is a small fact or maybe a game changer but there is not a day that something new does not peak my interest

2) I am loving being a mom and seeing my kids and their friends prep to be a better generation who can contribute to the world - they are not like us, or like our parents, I do not look at that as negative but rather as the next step in how people keep changing 

3) I am glad that isis and it's like minded counterparts in any religion are not the majority - THAT'S RIGHT NOT THE MAJORITY - and that while they keep committing heinous acts the majority of us can say no not in my name and fight them with weapons but also without resorting to their ignorant rhetoric

4) Differences - considering how much I have moved, that I come from a country that was never quite homogeneous, that my favorite place is a city that is know for having no "one" of anything it makes sense.  I do not like to eat the same food, keep the same hair color and even traditions I like to infuse with some change.  I love how we all look different, smell different, sound different and most of all somehow overwhelmingly live with our differences 

5) I have choices  -- and I will fight to continue to remind people that we all have choices - we can choose to be better or choose to be bitter.  We can choose to limit others or we can choose to grow with them.   I am grateful to live in a country that still allows me speak and vote and yell about those choices 

6) Music and art and books and makeup and shoes - and all those things that I do not need  - how wonderful they all are and how lucky are we all when for a moment or more we can appreciate not having things just because we need them but because something is beautiful about them to us 

7) The beach and cities - my places that give me solace, one with the roar of the ocean and one with the roar of crowds - both vast - both different - both where I find my sweet spot year round 

8) Singing and dancing  - like a mad woman, loud and wild and all over the place every chance I get 

9) Great kisses -- those smoochy ones I get with my weekly Sunday snuggle with my boys as well as those that make me blush when I think of them ... what a great invention kissing is and when it is good oofta - THANK YOU 

I am always thankful to my friends, both new and long time, male and female, those etched into my very soul as well as just the casual acquaintances.  

My favorite holiday because it reminds me what can so easily be forgotten among the negativity - that we all have something to be thankful for.  Happy Thanksgiving