Giving thanks for family, food and… football???

One of the year's best holidays was a couple of days ago. I don't know how you celebrate Thanksgiving, but in my house there are several things that we are thankful for and my title of this column should give you a hint.There is a specific order to the three things mentioned in the above heading. I will get to that soon, but for now let's see if your day is anything close to my family's traditions.For the second straight year our daughter Ashley flew up from Florida for Thanksgiving week. Our son Brian drove over from Carey and it is always a blessing to have our entire family together no matter what date the calendar shows. However, when the month is November and it's a Thursday it likely means a big dinner feast and a lot of smiles.In our house the scheduled dinner time is usually noon on holidays. On this particular one, part of the timing involves the football games scheduled on TV. For several years now, the NFL plays three games on this holiday. The family member most concerned about game times would be me. In fact the others likely couldn't tell you which teams are playing, let alone what time.So while I "let" my wife take care of the meal preparation, I make sure she knows what time I would like to see eating take place. It's called doing my part. Come on ladies, stop rolling your eyes!With the Lions/Packers game coming on at one o'clock, I figured one hour to eat would be plenty. It was more than enough actually as we had time to spare before the game started.Many traditional Thanksgiving dinners consist of turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. Perhaps yours was something in this order. Ours was a little different however. We opted for ham, cheesy potatoes, corn casserole and… OK, we did have pumpkin pie!For those that watch the football action on Thanksgiving Day, your motivation for doing so may be different than mine. Some of you may just enjoy the game of football. Who is playing doesn't really matter. Others will watch if "their" team is playing. In my case I don't really care who wins or loses. I watch because I am in a fantasy football league and I want to see how my players are doing.It's a scoring only league and I had players in all three games, so I didn't want to miss any of the action. With dinner finished it was time to park myself in front of the TV. In any other year I would likely be set for all three games. But one member of our family had a significant birthday last week and it was decided we would wait to celebrate it when we were all together.That would mean cake and ice cream, cards, gifts and the obligatory singing of Happy Birthday. Who was the family member and what was the significance of this particular birthday? Well, it was me and it was what I consider three fourths.Yes, I have been on this earth for three quarters of a century now. A little scary, but it is what it is. I can't change it. What I can do is time the celebration to coincide with halftime of game one. And yes, I pulled it off!The rest of the day, as far as food is concerned, is what we call "grazing." There are all kinds of leftovers from our noon feast. When one gets hungry, they eat. That means I don't have to miss any game time. In all seriousness, I was so full after cake and ice cream, I didn't eat the rest of the day. Why do I feel like more and more people are once again rolling their eyes?!?I don't know if your day was anything like ours or not, but I can tell you that my family is very thankful. As for which of the three things mentioned in my title is most important, I can tell you that football is at the bottom of the list. Had I not had the chance to see any football, I would not have cared. It was not even close to the other two things.My wife did an excellent job (as always) in making the meal. I said earlier that we "opted" for one item over another. How can one not be thankful that we have the opportunity to choose what we want to eat for Thanksgiving when there are people all over this world that not only don't get to choose, but may not get to eat at all!For sure, the most important part of any holiday is family. I never take for granted that all four of us will continue be together indefinitely. We never know how many more holidays we'll get to continue to celebrate. That point was driven home this week after the tragedy that occurred in Tiffin recently. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends, first responders and all who were most directly affected by this horrific event.I hope your Thanksgiving was full of happiness, food and love. And if there was a little football involved… well, that's OK too.