Friday, December 4, 2009

Gratitude

Gratitude. Its something you generally talk about in November. You know, with Thanksgiving and all.

But me, sometimes I'm a little off. I'm either late or early. Never quite on time.

December 1st I was at a mom-ish type meeting and part of the gathering was to make a Blessing Box - a simple little box to keep track of things you are thankful for.



Grand idea, thought I. And the following day I introduced it to Iggy and Ooky. I set it on an end table with lots of colorful papers and a pencil.

"What's that?" one of them asked.
"A Blessing Box. A Gratitude Box. Whenever you think of something you might be thankful for, write it down on a slip of paper, fold it up, and add it to the box."

They said oh. I didn't think much would happen. Not to say that gratitude isn't high on our list of important things or that we don't talk about it. Because we do. But lets be truthful: Ooky and Iggy are 5 and 6 year old boys. Enough said.

We decided we would look through the box and read the slips of paper on Christmas, to remind us of everything that has happened in the last month that we are thankful for. Everyone is in charge of their own writing (which means there may be serious decoding on MamaTea's part, but its sweet just the same).

I have added a couple things myself. I'm thankful we have a nice warm house with a woodstove that smells so divine. And I'm thankful that we could put up a wall in the basement (long story for another post) because it means we will get more time with Hubster.

Two slips of paper I put in.

This is what the box looks like tonight.



Now that picture is worth a million billion words...don't you think?

4 comments:

None said...

There is a quote from my religious textbook .... "Gratitude is riches, complaint is poverty"..... it looks like you are very wealthy, indeed.

Pam

Amy Dingmann said...

Very sweet quote. I'm stealing it to add to the edge of my computer screen. Thanks :)

Kristie said...

Love it, what a great thing to do every year as a tradition, see what new things to be thankful for each year!

Anonymous said...

What a beautiful thing to see...gratitude must just being seeping out of their every pore! That's so awesome!!!