Giving Thanks

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving!

For anyone reading this outside of the United States, you should come visit for a wonderful holiday next year. How awesome to have an entire day set aside for giving thanks to God as a nation.  Lots of other traditions surround this day, like family gatherings and eating turkey.  My personal favorites are also watching football and having my first glass (or two or three) of eggnog for the holiday season.  

This year, we took a caravan to Chicago: my husband, our two kids, plus my parents and my six siblings all piled into a 12-passenger van together for the 6-hour round trip.  We celebrated with my dad's side of the family.  He is one of 14 siblings (no, 14 was not a typo)!  As you can imagine, there were many aunts, uncles, and cousins around.  We returned to Michigan that night, followed by other celebrations with David’s side of the family on Friday and Saturday.  

Last Sunday, David and I drove down to South Bend, Indiana with our daughter, Chiara, for my concert at Holy Cross College.  Our son Jamal stayed in Michigan at my parents’ so he could run, play, and do all sorts of fun, toddler stuff while we were away.  Friends of ours live in the area, so they hosted us and watched Chiara so we could focus on my performance.   

The quick overnight trip was a great opportunity to share my music in a ministry setting, meet some awesome students from the Mission Team of Holy Cross College, and reconnect with other friends from Notre Dame University.  Not to mention, it was an exciting time to visit the Notre Dame campus with their undefeated football team heading to the National Championship.  Driving back to Michigan after a week of travels, I felt overwhelmingly privileged.

Overall, I am thankful for so many blessings at the start of this holiday season.  There are too many to list.

Briefly, I would like to focus on the success of our recent Kickstarter campaign.  It is thrilling to begin work on my newest recording project, knowing that hundreds of people are supporting me each step of the way.  Last week, I signed the contract to officially begin recording with ICON Studio Productions.  This week, David started prepping my Advent/Christmas CD’s to mail out as the first wave of our Kickstarter rewards.

In the lyrics of Josh Groban, “There’s so much to be thankful for.”

Peace!


Amanda