Blessed and Thankful as We

    As Paul and I raise our daughter Sarah, she asks many questions about the past. How things were when we were young and when our parents were young. She wants to better understand why people did some of the things they did, "Back-in-the-day". Since Paul and I have an age difference of eighteen years between us, and he was older then most fathers, when Sarah was born, our experiences are somewhat varied. Also, Paul's dad was older, when Paul was born and there were eleven years between his mom and dad. In essence, Sarah has the experiences of over one hundred years to glean from her parents and grand parents. Sarah tries to put all these experiences into her mind and understand how different things were then, as oppose to what she experiences now.
    Sarah could not understand why Paul's mom did not make home made bread in her older years, but did so all the time, when Paul was young. I explained, "Your grandma Jean, didn't have a Kitchen Aid Mixer, like mommy does. She had to mix the bread and kneed it by hand and that is hard work, especially when she was older and her hands would shake". I told Sarah that she and I would make bread together without the mixer soon, so that she would know what I was talking about. She protested, "NO, I have seen it on TV, I don't want to do that"!
   When I made Thanksgiving dinner in Jean's kitchen, several years ago, I literally only had a few knives, spoons, several bowls and not much else to work with. Not even a potato peeler, till I bought her one. I introduced her to The Pampered Chef products and she was amazed.
    Little does Sarah know, that I plan to make bread from scratch without a mixer today on Thanksgiving, since we are staying home and our big family dinner is on Saturday. I am doing this, in order to help us both be more thankful for all the tools we have.
    Thank you God for all the wonderful tools you have given us to make wonderful food to enjoy on this day of Thanksgiving. Thank you also for the food we have to eat and share, with friends and family. Please be with others that may not be as blessed and thankful as we. Amen.