Thanksgiving Letter

Sydney:

I can't remember if I sent a Thanksgiving letter so here goes.  

I think that Thanksgiving is the best holiday of the year.  It starts the Christmas season and you don't have the letdown after the feast is over.  Instead, there's Christmas to look forward to.  There are no presents and no gifts and so there are no unmet expectations.  As a guy, it's pretty hard to fail.  Compare this to Christmas where I fail almost every year.

I love getting together with family and renewing my love for everyone that means so much to me.  I'm thankful for the Winkel family.  I've tried hard to make them my own and love them accordingly. I'm happy to say that I've largely succeeded and there has been no downside to that.  The Gibbons family is where my heart is.  I love my parents and siblings.  It's fun to be with them and renew my love for them.  As you know, we don't get together with the Gibbons family enough.  I have hope that as life progresses, you will have more opportunity to get to know your Gibbons side of the family.

Most of all, I'm thankful for Mom and our children.  We aren't perfect and there is a lot of life ahead of us all, but, I will take every day we get together as a victory.  

One of the changes that will begin to happen in our family is marriage.  The dynamic of having other wonderful people in the home who come from different cultures and have slightly different values will create interesting and different family get togethers.  I hope we are able to navigate these changes and keep our family close.  I'm all for trying.  Just make sure that you marry well ;)

You are a great little letter writer and I love reading your emails.  That's saying something, as the only other cousin/friend whose emails are interesting to me are Jonathan.  He's a good writer.

I was thinking about the Isle of Yew.  I'll check and see if I can buy the place and live there for the rest of my life.

Dad