Thoroughly Thankful Thursday

I was just thinking last week about my MIL.  She's busy and not a phonaholic.  I'm busy and not a phonaholic...plus I've got that painfully shy factor with my phone-phobia, so we don't get to talk too often.  When I think about her since I've know her, though, I am so thankful for who she is.  She made me feel completely welcomed and as comfortable as she could from the moment I first met her.  This would probable seem like nothing except that she does this with everyone.  When she walks into a room, she will go and introduce herself to people, and if she sees someone looking painfully uncomfortable, she tries her best to make them feel comfortable and included.  I don't think it's easy for her.  Maybe part of her is shy like me.  She is indeed not a naturally super outgoing, chatty person, but she does it because she cares about people, and knows how they might be feeling, and wants them to just be able to relax and enjoy themselves.

Another thing I love about my MIL is her generosity.  She flipping flew me to Missouri to meet a bunch of family before my husband went on his mission.  She takes care of her family!!!  She makes Christmas magical for the kids and fun/silly too.  When we do get to see her in person (which ends up being not often enough) she sings the best songs to the kids, and I will always have the picture in my mind of her holding each of her little grand babies, especially when she would find just the right cellphone ring to make them happy and stop crying.  So sweet and funny and cute and loving all at once.

Inevitably, when I think of my MIL, I think of what a friend she was when we were both missing my husband while he was on his mission.  AND, I think about our wedding.  We were just, um, desperate to get married, full of lots of love and hormones, and not necessarily thinking straight about the details.  When I read about how the average wedding costs $27,000 now, I almost LOL because we would have been happy with overalls and hay bales I'm sure.  We.just.wanted.to.be.married in the right place, and that's about as far as we had gotten.  She explained to the youthful containers of hormones that we would want some special stuff, some decorations, to actually feed people at our reception.  Yes, we I (I can only speak for me, I suppose) was just clueless because I was so focused on the end result and not the journey.  She made us a beautiful wedding cake and freaked out about color coordination and centerpieces and such for me, because I just didn't care-too in love to care.  I thought it all looked great and felt very loved by all she did.  Looking back, I sound pretty flaky (which I'm not generally a flake but love makes me flaky maybe?), but regardless, she loved us and wanted us to have good memories, so she arranged for lots of things.  It was a super simple wedding and reception, but it was so much more than I could have ever hoped, just perfect for us.  We have a ton of pics (free I might add), and we had nice receptions and got to have a romantic first dance all by ourselves under some lovely twinkling lights and the beautiful night sky in Nevada.  I am thankful for my MIL-for her protecting and teaching and keeping my husband alive and relatively disciplined until we got married, for her friendship and support in our whirlwind romance, and for all she has done for us since then.  We don't talk a lot, but I know she is there, and I love who she is and what she has taught me and the fun little memories I have because of knowing her.