Thanksgiving. {a family affair}

Thanksgiving is all about family. Eating, laughing, sharing, watching football and spending time together. I look forward to it every year. 

Family is always close to the top of  my thankful list during Thanksgiving, but I realized this year that even though I'm thankful for family I haven't really let "family" sink in.

You see, I have a uniquely large family, and by large I mean huge. 

My mom is one of eleven children. Think about that for a minute, one of eleven, and they only had one bathroom in their house. Yikes. My aunt figured out that Jacob is the 68th direct descendant of my grandparents. 68th! Just 12 days later the 69th was born and my sister is having the 70th in January. It's incredible that two people who decided to marry 70ish years ago has resulted in so many people in such a short period of time. 

 The number continues to grow when you add in my dad's side of the family with about 20 people.

I have been so fortunate to have such a large close family. Some of my greatest childhood memories are from large family functions. There is never a dull moment. Something is always going on, and we never do anything small. Thanksgiving dinner usually consists of at least thirty people. I love it! I love the craziness of our get togethers. I love that there are is always a group of us for the smallest of occasions. I love that within a 5 mile radius of my house there are roughly 30 people I can call who are willing to help me in a moments notice.  

 Then it occurred to me, not only am I fortunate for all these people, but my boys get to grow up with all these wonderful people too. Not only do they have my family but Brett's also. They have aunts, uncles, great-aunts, great-uncles, grandparents, great-grandparents, cousins, second cousins, cousins two, three, four time removed (whatever all that means). There's not a lot of kids out there that can say that. We have a unique situation and I'm thankful for each person that makes up our family. 

For as long as I can remember on Thanksgiving I have always said I am thankful for my family, but it took me 30 years to really understand why I am thankful for them.