Thanksgiving is five weeks out. Montana is improving. Soccer season is still alive. Gratitude looks different when the year has been hard.

I want to start this one differently.

The Montana situation — the thing I’ve been carrying quietly for weeks, the family matter I’ve mentioned without getting into specifics — is improving. It’s not resolved. But it’s better than it was. And after a stretch of weeks where better felt like something that might not come I want to acknowledge that it did.

Soccer season is still alive. The playoff picture isn’t decided yet and that means there are games left and my daughter is still playing and I’m still in those stands. That’s a good thing.

Thanksgiving is five weeks out. November 26th. The table will be full. The family will be there.

I’m writing this on a Sunday morning in late October and for the first time in a while the week ahead feels lighter than the one behind it. That’s worth saying. Worth noticing. Worth being deliberately grateful for before the moment passes.

This has been a year.

A graduation. A road trip to Montana and Minnesota and the Grand Tetons. A gravesite in Lewistown. A 1923 T bucket at Flathead Lake. Seventeen people on the Snake River in Wyoming. A daughter playing soccer on a broken foot. A youngest who can fly on a gymnastics floor and is going to Las Vegas to compete. A son’s first bow hunt without me. A Father’s Day that was both beautiful and hard in the way it always is.

And Montana. The thing I’ve been carrying. The weeks of heaviness. The hoping for a miracle.

A year like this one doesn’t fit neatly into grateful or not grateful. It’s both. It’s the road trip of a lifetime and the hard phone calls from 700 miles away in the same summer. It’s watching your daughter lift her crying captain off the ground after a loss and also sitting with something unresolved that you can’t fully control.

That’s what real life looks like. Not the highlight reel version. The actual version.

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about as Thanksgiving approaches — gratitude isn’t a feeling that shows up automatically when things go well. It’s a practice. A decision. Something you do deliberately especially in the years that hand you both the hard and the good in the same stretch of months.

The things I’m genuinely grateful for this year — not the polished version but the actual list:

My mom is okay. That matters more than I can adequately express.

Four kids who are healthy and doing things they love. A 16 year old still playing soccer. A 10 year old going to Las Vegas. An oldest son figuring out his next chapter. A 13 year old who is quieter than the others and watching everything and turning into someone remarkable.

A wife who drove to Bend with me on a Tuesday night just to watch a soccer game and talked the whole way there and back.

A job that pays the bills and challenges me and a team I respect.

A summer that happened. The road trip. Montana. The Tetons. All of it.

A newsletter that went out every Sunday even on the heavy weeks. Twenty four issues. Every single one.

That’s the list. Not perfect. Not pain-free. But genuinely, honestly good.

Thanksgiving is November 26th — five weeks away. The food costs are actually down this year which is genuinely good news. The American Farm Bureau puts a classic dinner for 10 at about $55 — turkey prices are down 16% from last year.

The part that surprises most families isn’t the food. It’s everything around the food. Travel. Hosting costs. The extra groceries that accumulate when family stays for the long weekend. The contribution to someone else’s dinner if you’re a guest. Add all of that together and the average American spends close to $1,000 on Thanksgiving total.

Three things worth doing in the next two weeks:

Book travel now if you haven’t. Thanksgiving travel is among the most expensive of the year and prices increase significantly as the date approaches. If you’re driving — budget the gas. If you’re flying — book this week not next.

Decide who is bringing what before the week of. The families who have the most stressful Thanksgivings are the ones who figure out the menu on Tuesday. A 10 minute group text now saves two days of coordination chaos later.

Set a hosting budget if you’re the one cooking. A Thanksgiving dinner for 10-15 people with all the trimmings runs $150-300 when you add alcohol, appetizers, desserts, and the things you forgot. Know the number before you’re at the grocery store.

That’s it. Three things. Takes 20 minutes. Makes November 26th significantly less stressful.

My dad died in January. I was 18. Which means every fall — September birthday, September anniversary, and then the long slide into the holidays — carries a particular weight. The season builds toward his absence in a way that’s hard to explain to people who haven’t felt it.

Thanksgiving is the first big holiday of that stretch. The one where the chair that isn’t filled becomes impossible to ignore. The one where you think about the grandfather my kids never got to have at the table. The one where you do the math — 25 years — and still somehow feel surprised that it’s been that long.

This year I’m trying something different. Instead of focusing on the chair that isn’t filled I’m focusing on the ones that are.

My mom — who has carried September and January and every holiday in between for 25 years with more grace than most people could manage. Three kids still at home. My oldest who just graduated and is figuring out what comes next. My wife who drove to Bend on a Tuesday night just to watch a soccer game and talked the whole way there and back. The family that showed up in Wyoming and Montana and Minnesota this summer and reminded me what it means to be connected to people who love you.

The table will be full on November 26th.

My dad would have loved that. I’m going to try to love it enough for both of us.

Four weeks to Thanksgiving. Soccer season decided one way or the other. The holiday season getting loud. We’ll talk about what November actually asks of us — and how to show up for it without losing your mind or your budget in the process.