It's easy to tell what Kerstin and Aaron Peppers and their extended family are most grateful for during this season devoted to giving thanks: little Juniper Ann Peppers, their baby No. 2, who arrived Friday.

"The plan right now is to have family at our house in Citrus Heights for Thanksgiving," Kerstin Peppers, 30, said during a trip to the mall a few days before the baby's birth.

Mother and baby are already home from the hospital, happy and healthy.

We truly have much to be thankful for in this country, this land of abundance and everyday blessings. By the standards of much of the world, Americans are impossibly wealthy, even now.

Yet this year has shown us that life can be tougher and more complicated than we thought, clouded with economic uncertainty and punctuated by the drumbeat of foreclosures and bad financial news.

Now more than ever, we count on what we hold dear. Our families and friends, who provide the loving clarity that sustains us. Our health. The possibility of a sunnier future.

Also, that Shiba Inu puppy cam, which has become the latest Internet addiction.

But wait, there's more.

"I like tuna sandwiches," said Tevis Peppers, Kerstin's 3-year-old son, who took a moment away from running around an indoor play area at the Galleria at Roseville for his first interview.

"That's what you're thankful for?" asked his grandmother, Patty Kruse. "Tuna sandwiches?"

He nodded, then thought for a second.

"Grilled cheese, I mean," he said.

"Anything else?" his grandmother asked.

"Toys!" he replied.

Toys do make life worth living. But ask grown-ups what they're most thankful for this Thanksgiving, and clear themes emerge.

"I'm thankful I have a good job," said Kruse, 55, a nurse practitioner who lives in Carmichael. "My husband is recently unemployed. There's a lot of that going around."

Unfortunately, yes.

Teresa Coons can tell us how economic concerns trickle into ordinary lives. A Roseville hairstylist on an afternoon outing to the mall with her 2-year-old daughter, Coons has seen clients cut back on their salon budgets.

"Totally," said Coons, 43. "People are stretching out their services. It's true. The luxuries are the first things to go.

"What I'm thankful for is our health and our well-being – especially in this economy."

Downsized expectations and scaled-back lives don't sound like the best spark for widespread gratitude. But maybe we should start thinking of those challenges in a new way. How else, for example, do people learn not to take the richness of ordinary life for granted?

"We can be thankful for difficult situations that bring us back to core needs about family and friends," said Dexter McNamara, executive director of the Sacramento Interfaith Service Bureau. "We can be thankful for the recognitions that sometimes only come through painful situations.

"In the midst of economic struggles, how incredibly lucky we still are for the blessings we do have."

So what is he thankful for this year?

The fact that his grandson, Ryan Spicker, who was born more than four months prematurely in 2007, is thriving, healthy and bright.

"He was in the hospital for a total of five months," McNamara said. "The nurses had to resuscitate him so many times. These are the miracles."

In Davis, artist Melissa Wood is thankful for the people in her life – her friends, teachers and students, and, most of all, "a husband who's my best friend," she said.

"My friends ground me," said Wood, 50. "All of us have the bad things as well as the good things, but the fact that we can share those things brings a roundness to life. I've got a wonderful group of people in my life."

And in Elk Grove, retiree Nancy Prewett can name a long list of what inspires her gratitude, including the democratic process and the nation's military personnel serving overseas.

"I could go on and on," said Prewett, 56.

For Thanksgiving, she plans to spend time with her elderly parents.

"I'm thankful I still have my parents," she said.

Family and friends, health, home and stability form the core of a thankful life, and cultivating a sense of gratitude can lift the spirits – and boost mental health in general, according to Psychology Today.

"Hope is that which pulls us forward," said McNamara. "The challenge is to be optimistic and hopeful about the future without being Pollyannish."

Which brings us back to Roseville and Patty Kruse, tending to her grandson in the mall's play area while her pregnant daughter, Kerstin Peppers, sits nearby.

"You know what I'm thankful for?" she asked little Tevis. "I'm thankful for my family. I'm thankful for you."

Call The Bee's Anita Creamer, (916) 321-1136.