Thanksgiving was a little complicated this year.  My oven decided that Nov. 26 was a good day to stop working and the 24 pound turkey I had just would not fit in my 30 year old microwave. We had company coming in from out of town and a feast to prepare for 14 people

My wife told me to treat the whole situation like an episode of Top Chef:

“Your task is to prepare a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for 14.  You will have 5 children, three teenagers, and 6 adults.  One of the adults is vegetarian.  One of the teenagers refuses to eat vegetables.  You must prepare a meal that everyone will enjoy and   (here’s the twist) you can not use your oven.  Go!”

So I carted the turkey out to a friend’s house, half an hour away, prepped it and threw it in the oven.  I used a mini wall oven for the sides (one at a time) and somehow managed to have it all arrive on the table vaguely warm and edible.  So all in all, the meal turned out great, but in the midst of the chaos (and dare I say, a little stress) we forgot to go around the table and tell what we were thankful for.  At the time I was just so happy to be sitting down and eating food, I’m not sure I could have come up with anything else. 

But with a couple days of relative sanity behind me, I wanted to take some time to list some of the things that I am currently thankful for.

• My wife

My wife, Sarah, is wonderful.  She’s cute, funny, a great mom and, apparently, a right smart lawyer.  I have to take her word on the lawyering part, but the rest I can attest to first hand.  People sometimes refer to their spouse as their partner, and while it’s not the most romantic term, in many ways, for us,  it’s very true.  In the daily battles of life, she is the one who I depend on, the one who I know understands, the one who will always support me.  We work together, somewhat seamlessly, in the task of running this family.  And when all the chores are done for the day – when dinner is cooked, when the kids are put to bed and there’s finally a little peace in the house, she’s the one I get to snuggle on the couch with until a few minutes later when we both fall asleep.  I’m a pretty lucky guy.

• My Kids

Yeah, yeah, I know.  Everyone’s thankful for their kids, and health and blah blah blah.  But I do want to take at least half a second to give a shout out to my chillins.  (did you see how I used the phrase “shout out” correctly?  That’s because I am hip). 

My kids are pretty awesome.  I don’t say that much, because I don’t want them to get a swelled head, and because it makes people with non-awesome kids feel bad.  But once a year, it’s worth throwing out there.

Audra is cute and vivacious and full of so much personality we occasionally have to have it liposuctioned away.  She is constantly making up plays and songs and asking to take your order for some unknown restaurant.  She has imagination to spare and enough spunk to jump start a 747. 

Our three-year-old, Asher, is about as funny a kid as ever pranced around a living room.  He alternates between sitting quietly and putting puzzles together and running around the grocery store shooting lasers (or something) at the elderly.  He thinks life is one long game, including things like putting his pants on.  The game, of course, being “can I wiggle and giggle so much that Dad can’t get my pants on.”  Asher makes me laugh ten times a day and only grit my teeth about half that much.

Micah is only 1, but boy he’s going to be something else.  He has no interest in walking yet but he can crawl faster than either of his siblings.  He only has two or three words, but talks in full, completely indistinguishable, sentences.   He likes to be held, but, even more, he likes to get down so he can crawl to the top of the playset when I’m not looking.  You know those old cartoons where a baby gets loose and ends up crawling through a construction site while the dog that’s supposed to be watching him tries to stop him?  That’s Micah.  He’s the baby on the 41st floor crawling out on a steel beam as the crane lifts it into place.  The only problem is that, in this scenario, I’m the dog who inevitably gets crushed by the wheelbarrow of bricks.

• Friends

I know, everyone’s got friends (well, I do know this one guy….)   But I am truly blessed by some wonderful people who make me laugh, help me out and generally keep me sane.  I am rarely at a loss for someone to talk to, have lunch with or ask for help from.  I am very aware of how all my friends bless my life every day.  I know I don’t tell them thank you often enough, but hopefully I can just write a poorly worded paragraph in my blog and that will suffice.

Ok, enough of the sappy stuff.  In no particular order, here are a dozen or more things that I am also really thankful for:

• Dr. Pepper – You’re gonna feel fine drinking that sweet southern wine

• My minivan – most 35 year old men are not thankful for their minivan, but I put between 500 and 800 miles a week on it and I am so ridiculously thankful for having a van than drives well, is comfortable, functional and has a sun roof.  It is truly the little things in life that keep me going (plus lots and lots of cupholders.

• Chipotle – love me some chipotle

• NPR – Did I mention that I was in the car a lot?  I probably listen to 20 hours of NPR a week (with some books on tape and an Ipod thrown in for good measure).  And while I’m still mad about the whole Bob Edwards debacle, Steve Inskeep is growing on me and there’s always Nina Totenberg (oh Nina, I could never be mad at you).

•  Williams Sonoma’s Filled Pancake Pan – I have been looking for a special Christmas morning breakfast treat and boy have I just found it.  Willams Somona sells this pan that makes round pancakes that you can fill with stuff like apple butter or strawberries or chocolate.  It is fabulous and it’s one of my new favorite things (take that Oprah).  http://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/c332/index.cfm?pkey=ccookware%2Dnew

• An ice cold glass of sweet tea – I make a darn good pitcher of sweet tea and I am thankful for my ability to do that.  People who drink unsweetened tea are freaks.

• Art – I really like things that have been made by hand (none of that lithograph crap either).  Paintings, pottery, woodwork.  I just love having things around that came out of someone’s imagination and were crafted by their skill.  We don’t have all that much but I love what we have and am always on the look out for more.  This is what makes me a horrible elitist.

• Our new president – I can’t even tell you how thankful

• Music – I’ve got over 500 cds and there’s only about 2 or 3 of them that I don’t like.  Music sustains me, energizes me and makes me feel young.  I would be hard pressed to live without it.

• Rita’s gelati – Man!  This stuff is darn near perfect on a hot day.

• Fall – I love living in a place where we have the change of seasons.  We have woods out our back door, and although, at the moment, I’m not that thankful for the 5 billion leaves in the yard, I love looking out and seeing the fall colors blanket the grass, the tall naked trees cutting silhouettes against the sky and the deer running through the woods scared s***less that someone’s about to shoot them.

• My iphone – Ok, I don’t actually have an iphone, but I really really want to be thankful for having one.

• Church – Our church is flawed and complicated and at times frustrating, but it is a family of good people trying to do good things in this world and I am so glad that we are a part of it.  We visited probably 20 churches before we found this one, and I feel blessed that we did.

• Bearnaise sauce – Is there anything better in the whole world than a juicy steak with béarnaise sauce on it?  The answer is no.

• TV – I know it doesn’t make me a good person, but boy at the end of a long day, it sure does hit the spot.  TV is sort of the Shoney’s Hot Fudge cake of the entertainment world.  It’s not all that good and it’s not really the best thing for you, but sometimes there’s nothing better in the whole world than sitting at a sticky table at 10pm and eating a hot fudge cake and drinking coffee out of a chipped ceramic mug.  (PS.  I like to, you know, read and stuff too.)

So there’s my list.  It’s not all inclusive, there’s lots of things that got left off, like being thankful for warm sweaters, the smell of wood burning, the efficiency of chik-fil-a’s drive through and the existence of the song “If you want to sing out, sing out” by Cat Stevens.  I could go on and on, but I think I’ll end with the thing that I am most thankful for right now: the fact that my oven is still under warranty.