So many people today are blogging about things they are thankful for let me join the noise. Today I am thankful that at 1730 hours I will have had the bundle of joy that is Faith in my life for exactly 1 year. When I found out my wife was pregnant I was afraid our pattern of 99s would be snapped. For the uninitiated, my birthday is exactly 99 days before my wife's. In 1997 my first daughter was born exactly 99 days before my birthday. Ginger got mad when I told her the two dates she'd have to have our second daughter on and did it between the two (though in her defense it wasn't on purpose). However, I decided that wasn't so bad because she was born IN 99. Imagine my delight when Doodlebug's due date was Ginger's birthday. While I couldn't get her to agree to having Faith on her birthday, I was at least satisfied that if all else fails the pattern should have held. Nines have held a special place in my life for some time, so as I raced to the hospital last year I noticed that 1+1+2+4+1+0 (the date)  equaled 9. Pattern loosely held in place, but then "little" Faith arrived and was weighed at an incredible 9 pounds 9 ounces.

It wouldn't be The Hole on the End of the Bible Belt if there wasn't a Providential spin to the story, and Faith's arrival is no different. Despite the fact that I lost out on the name Scarlett Grace, a name I love so much I added as a major character in my current work in progress, my choice was added as a middle name to Ms Faith Scarlett. And a little known fact that will only now be revealed to my wife as she reads this post, I loved her choice of Faith as a name because she arrived at a time when I felt her faith was low and needed a boost. I knew that forever more her Faith would be growing and getting stronger daily from now on.

I hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving and enjoy the day and over-indulge in the 3 f's: Food, Family and Football, not necessarily in that order. For my part it will be 4 ever since Faith was added to the fold forever.

And I'm thankful for the end of a tradition, year after year for the last 15 or so years there have been two Thanksgiving traditions: 1) watching the Lions play football, and 2) complaining about watching the Lions play football. This year we're only doing the former, and since neither Super Bowl XXX or XLV happened in my playbook (Go Steelers!), I'm certainly rooting for the Lions to take out the team that thinks they won back in February.

~~~~~~~~~~~