First turkey day without my family

This one promises to be a tough day. XH has the girls today, even though he isn't doing anything with them except maybe eating dinner at Denny's. I've been invited to a friend's house for dinner, just the two of us. Her xh also has her children and her new boyfriend is out of the country with his family. We are getting a turkey dinner from the market, adding our own sides and I am making a chocolate pecan pie and bringing a couple bottles of wine and some movies. We are going to eat and watch movies and enjoy the day together. I am sad that I will not be with my girls for Thanksgiving for the first time in their entire lives, feeling a little bitchy that HE gets them the first big holiday after our divorce, but that's the way the cookie crumbles at this point. I will have them with me for Christmas Eve and morning, and then they'll go to his house at around noon or 1pm so it's sort of fair.

Despite my sadness at not being with family for the first Thanksgiving in my entire 38 years of life, I do have a lot to be thankful for. I have a good job, beautiful, healthy children, I'm healthy and getting healthier, a very painful and toxic relationship is over and I get to move on and make a new start, I have good friends who love, understand and support me, I am making new friends all the time, I am able to go to school to help get a better job in the future, I have a beautiful house which I am slowly turning into MY home, I have a car, my bills are paid on time and for the first time in my life, I get to rely on me to take care of myself. Hard as that last one is, I am actually thankful for the opportunity to show myself what I am capable of. I am looking forward to the next year, and all the years to come in my life - really, really looking forward to them for the first time. I realized yesterday while looking at some different jobs on the SHRM website that once T graduates high school and I start looking for a new job, I can actually look for a job anywhere in the country. I will be ready to make a fresh start, and I may just choose to find the right job and follow where it takes me. That is really exciting to me!