Happy Thanksgiving!

The first Pilgrims weren't a part of my family history...but close. A Cumings descendant, Isaac Cumings, came on the good ship Sally Ann not many more years later, and settled in New England. Family history holds that our ancestors include bondservants -- people who exchanged passage to the New Land for years of their effort, plus a little money and a suit of clothes.

Husband's family, black-haired Vikings all, emigrated from Denmark on the Petterson side. The Bricks, on the other hand, were some of the first visitors to the Colonies -- two brothers founded Bricktown, New Jersey, early on.

Our families have been here a long time. They bled and died in the American Revolution; struggled to survive in the wilderness, first in New York and then in Michigan. they moved west, to Oregon, California and Colorado. (The latter -- that's us!)

They didn't always have easy lives. But they persevered.

I am grateful for them...for their pigheaded stubbornness. Their insistence that people have to work for a living -- that respect and a name well-respected were worth far more than big bucks and a crooked heart. They insisted on patriotism, faith in their church (but far more in God), faith in the family.

As Husband is fond of saying to his daughters, we come from Good Stock. I'm grateful for that...and him. (Love you, Dave!) Our healthy, clever daughters. A warm home (with a good roof!). Our bills paid. A profession I enjoy. A faith in Gold that keeps us going, through the good and the hard times.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends.