Day twelve and Thanksgiving recap

Day Twelve is assigned to be a post about what I believe and because it doesn't get any more specific than that I'm sure I could go on and on, but I will try to keep things simplistic.

I believe in God, and that Jesus was sent to Earth to die for our sins. I don't believe that there is a 'right' way to be religious or spiritual, meaning that I don't think that those who don't go to church, or someone who calls God a different name, or people who don't take communion are all destined to hell. I think being a good person is much more important that what religion you consider yourself.

I believe that my husband is the most fundamentally good person I have ever met. He will always do the right thing, even when no one is looking and when no one will know that he did it.

I believe that common courtesy is vastly underrated and underutilized (or maybe not even known anymore). A few weeks ago a woman at the grocery store rammed right into my huge belly with her cart, looked at me, and kept walking. Rudeness like this happens more and more frequently to me lately, so I try to appreciate the words, "Excuse me," and things like thank you notes, kind words, and apologies even more than before.

I believe that Sprocket will be the Peanut's guardian angel.

I believe that my parents will spoil the Peanut to within an inch of turning her into a rotten Princess. I will, however, put peas under her mattress just to keep her balanced.

I believe that we each have a responsibility to leave the world a better place every day. That sounds prophetic, but it can be something as simple as a smile given to a stranger or a door held open for a frantic mother. Along these lines, Christmas makes me even more aware of this and my next post will be about the amazing time we had over the past two weeks doing our annual Christmas giving.

And I believe that 99% of what my mother told me growing up was accurate. Prior to age 20 I believed that about 10% of it was legit, so I also believe that the Peanut will bring me my karmic retribution and not listen to anything I say.

As for Thanksgiving, it was stressful but lovely. We hosted for the first time and my Dad decided to barbecue the turkey although he really had no game plan as to how to go about doing so. My mom donned her superwoman cape and swept in, taking over or helping with everything and Corey drove around town all night Wednesday trying to find a stone fire pit so that we could sit out in the backyard and enjoy the (cold) weather.

I wish I had taken a picture of our table because it was the first time we have taken out our antique wedding china, crystal and gold flatware all at the same time and it really was breathtaking. Not only that, not a single item was broken!

And speaking of pictures, I will try to post some pretty ones over the next few weeks as I attempt to learn the ropes on our new Canon Rebel. My parents gave us the early Christmas present so that we could figure it out prior to the baby making her big appearance, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't horribly overwhelmed. Different lenses, flash settings, auto optimization and even an integrated self-cleaning system - whew!

And we may need the camera sooner rather than later as my contractions have kicked up a notch in the past few days. Nothing that I'm running to the hospital for yet, but they're definitely getting stronger and more often, so we will find out on Friday if there's any progress or if we really still have in the neighborhood of 33 days before the princess emerges.

Until then my husband has put me on his own version of modified bed rest which is comprised of yelling at me when I so much as roll over, so if there's anything we can do to keep her cooking for another little while I'm sure we will do it.