2012!

A random pet peeve of mine about facebook is the month of November. The month is fine, it's the activity that many participate in that sort of irks me. You see, for the last three years or so, every November regular facebook users decide they are going to say something they are thankful for each day...a month of thankfulness. What's so bad about that you might ask??? Well, nothing, except that some of the people that participate in this activity then use the other 11 months to whine and complain about every little thing in their lives. I do have some good friends that do this thankful activity that live very thankful lives year round, and to those friends I say, excellent idea...keep it up!

One day this past November I was giving Prince Charming an earful about this very tradition on fb and he responded with (and I hate when he is right about something I'm about to mount my soap box about) "isn't that the same as you doing the thankful tree with the kids...just in November". Swallow, gulp, swallow. Well yes, Prince Charming, I suppose it is, thanks for mentioning it!!!!

Thus began my quest to live a more thankful lifestyle for my own sake, but also to model it for my kids. There is nothing worse than ungrateful children, they irk me and I don't like it! So I began my task of trying to think of things we could do more regularly to foster this character trait of being thankful.

I think I'll post another time about some of the day-to-day things we're working on, but I really enjoyed our New Year's Eve efforts the other day! I got our calendar down off the wall and we started back in January 2011 and read all the things we did/saw/visitied/experienced, etc. I had Miss M and JB (lets be realistic here, mostly Miss M and by the time we got to August it was very mommy directed) listen to all the things on the calendar and pick something we could turn into a phrase of thankfulness. January was easy, my mom had some eye surgery and it went perfectly. February is Miss M's birthday so she wanted to be thankful for her party and the presents she got, sounded good to me. And on it went, some months we had to be creative but it was fun to look back at the whole year and do it with our thankful glasses on (hey, I should make little sunglasses to wear next time and we can "look" for things to be thankful for...). Others that made the list were baby Trey arriving safely to some good friends, a visit with Keerstin and Heather, Daddy's new position at work and of course, Jesus' birthday!

Our list is hanging up so we can see it. Then we made a teachery "web" of things we are looking forward to in 2012. The beach, vacation, more birthdays, Miss M going to kindergarten and JB going to Cubbies plus much more made that list.

I think I might have started a new tradition, if I keep these two lists each year we'll have some great memories to look back on. Happy New Year everyone!!