This Thursday, I am thankful for my family.

I don’t think I am thankful for them often enough, and they do so much for me. Including drive me completely insane. Seriously… nobody gets on my nerves more than my family. Except, well… maybe another day.

However, it’s obvious that they love me, and would do anything to help me and to protect me. I love them, too. And I am very protective of them, no matter how batty they make me. If I didn’t have them, who knows where I would be at, what I would have lost at this point in my life, or who I would even be. I don’t know how people survive without their family rallied around them. I’m very blessed to have always been surrounded by my family. And my son is very blessed to be being raised right smack in the middle of this big, sometimes crazy, always fiercely protective family of ours.

I can’t go on and on, because I get emotional… but I want to mention also, that today is the 3 year anniversary of the death of my Grandpa, lovingly known as Paw Bill. I miss him, terribly. Every single solitary day, I miss him. N misses him. I’m so thankful that he got to know him, and that he remembers him. I’m thankful for the closeness that they shared in the almost 4 short years that they had together. I’m thankful for my grandma, for always standing by her man, even when people thought she shouldn’t. If she hadn’t done that, we may have never seen the beauty and adoration for his family that lived inside of him.

I’m also very thankful that I was with him, right there at his bedside, sleeping with my head on his bed his last night here on Earth. It was difficult, but I couldn’t bring myself to walk away from him. I’m glad I stayed.