It seems especially fitting that the annual symbolic finalization of children's adoptions took place right before this Thanksgiving Day, a holiday dedicated to gratitude for our good fortunes.

Tuesday's ceremony, presided over by District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock in the Capitol Rotunda as part of National Adoption Awareness Month, certainly celebrated a wonderful turn of fortune for the adopted children, although some were too young to appreciate their luck right now.

According to Joan Miles, director of the state Department of Health and Human Services, there are about 1,800 Montana children in foster care, and fewer than half of them are ever going to be reunited with their birth parents. Those of them who find a real adoptive family, removing them from the permanent outsider status of kids who know too well that their home life always is tentative and temporary, are lucky children indeed.

And, of course, it is that permanent security of belonging to a family that lies at the heart of Thanksgiving. We can, and should, give thanks as well for all of our blessings, from those big-screen televisions and fancy cell phones to the great stroke of luck that let us live in this nation and this state and this community.

But ultimately it is our families themselves, those familiar folk sitting around that big, fat turkey today, that we celebrate the most, if only we stop to think about it.

And that's why Wednesday's front page story about that adoption ceremony in the Rotunda was more than just a nice little read. It was a real Thanksgiving moment, and we can't have too many of them.