Thankfuls

We’re still in the process of finishing out the fall holidays and putting those decorations away and getting Christmas set up at our house. So here’s one more Thanksgiving related post.

Two years ago we started a tradition of sitting down every night before bed starting on November 1st till Thanksgiving and writing down something we are thankful for on a slip of paper and putting it in a jar decorated with a cornucopia window cling. Iddo called them “Thankfuls” that first year and the name has stuck. This year we let Shimri and Shimei tell us what they are thankful for as well.

The last two years we then sat down after the big meal and read through the jar to see what we’d been thankful for that month. It’s a fun activity. The first year Iddo was thankful for peace a lot while Brett was thankful for the medications that were helping him feel better (a theme we noticed from him this November as well).

Our Thanksgiving was big for us to go through them last week so tonight for Family Home Evening we had a fire in the backyard, roasted some marshmallows (and learned that the freshness of said marshmallows makes a big difference in how well they roast) and read our thankfuls. We might make that the tradition in the future (with fresh marshmallows though) because it was a lot of fun.

Some highlights from this year’s thankfuls:

• Shimei was thankful multiple times for his Daddy Bear, Tug-Tug, and Turtle. He just changed up the order from night to night.
• Iddo thought grand again and was thankful for the world and all the people. One night she wanted to be thankful for everything on the world till we reminded her about mosquitoes, so instead she was thankful for everything on the world except mosquitoes.
• We’re not exactly sure why or how, but towards the end it became a joke for our kids to add “in the sky” to whatever they were thankful for that night, such as “I’m thankful for Daddy in the sky.”
• Shimri was thankful for Daddy’s hands and foots one night.
• The kids liked when we were thankful for them. It’s important for us to express gratitude to the people closest to us.

In 23 days we filled that jar with 115 thankfuls. Count your blessings indeed.