Giving Thanks

This month my mom has been blogging daily about things for which she's thankful. I've tried to write gratitude journals but am usually less-than-committed to that. I really like the idea of it though.

One year when we were little we did a Thanksgiving tree in our bathroom. It's possible we did it more than one year, but it's a distinct memory. We cut out all these leaves from yellow, orange, brown and red construction paper. We taped a brown paper "trunk" to the hot water heater door, and then every day of November we wrote something we were thankful for on a leaf and taped them on the trunk.

I'm sure I was thankful for family, friends, books, my toys, the usual things a kid likes. I'm still thankful for all those things (I still have my Brownie bear and Heidi "My Child" doll). And I LOVE the idea of a Thanksgiving tree -- seeing the gratitudes "grow" before you.

Another thing I love about this time of year are the turkey hands. Tracing a hand and using the fingers as the feathers and the thumb as the turkey's head. And if we're ever blessed with children I like the idea of tracing their hands each year and building the turkey that way -- each year adding more "feathers" with the larger hand outline. I have all sorts of crazy ideas of the things I'd like to do with kids ... but I know I'll be lucky to just keep it together!

But today, specifically I am thankful for basketball with my husband, ridiculously warm weather in November, the joy of giving my crocheted works to the craft fair and a grande skim latte on a downtown bus ride after church.

Happy weekend.