Thanksgiving: An Act Of Giving Thanks.

I wanted to share with you something I'm super excited about.

Like, nerdy-level  excited about.

Last year, right before Thanksgiving, I had this idea, but it was too late to start it.  I've kept it tucked safely in the back of my mommy brain since then, and I have been biding my time all October to finally bust this out.

Every year my family goes all out on Christmas.  We do the whole shebang: Black Friday, Cyber Monday, circling things in toy books and ads, scouring stores for the perfect gift, awesome wrapping parties, huge dinners, a million decorations, tons of traditions...you get the picture.  It be gettin' cray cray up in here.  

I'm sorry.

Anyway.

Because it can be easy to spend way too much focus on what we don't have and what we want, I wanted to create a season of thankfulness that will (hopefully) transfer well into the Christmas season, too.

I started by making a rather crude looking "turkey."  I'm going to go ahead and warn you that I'm using that term pretty loosely.  I used a rolled up piece of brown packing paper, but a paper towel tube would be peachy.  I then added a beak and some eyes.  Remember, people, kids don't care if your crafts are Pinterest-worthy.

Then I cut out about a million "feathers."

Every night before bedtime in the month of November, we are coming together as a family (after Eva gets put in bed...no need to make this harder for ourselves...).  We will start with reading Psalm 100.

1 Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.

2 Worship the Lord with gladness;

come before Him with joyful songs.

3 Know that the Lord is God.

It is He who made us, and we are His;

we are His people, the sheep of His pasture.

4 Enter His gates with thanksgiving

and His courts with praise;

give thanks to Him and praise His name.

5 For the Lord is good and His love endures forever;

His faithfulness continues through all generations.

I just thought this passage was so appropriate.  I want myself and my kids to remember why we thank and praise the Lord: because He is God.  His love endures forever.  We will spend a little time each night breaking this passage down a bit so that it's more understandable to a 3 and 6 year old as well as give us parents some time to really chew on it.

Next, everyone in the family (sans sweet baby Eva) gets a feather, and every night, we will each write one thing we are thankful for.  We will go around the room and tell what we wrote and why we wrote it.  I'm already tickled at Izzy's "I'm thankful when Mommy lets me have candy."  Remind me again why we spend a small fortune for Christmas gifts...  Then we glue our feathers onto the "turkey."

Finally, Bird leads us in prayer to simply thank God- our provider- for these things, no matter how trivial they may seem to others.

It's pretty simple.  It takes maybe 20 minutes or so, but for 28 days at least, we will have a tangible and constant reminder in our home of things we are thankful for.

And I'm thankful for that.