a long list of thankfulness

About a year ago, we started a family list of things to be thankful for. A long strip of paper hung on our wall and we would add to it regularly over a month or so... the kids coming up with all kinds of gorgeous things to be grateful for. It was lovely to have it hanging near our dining table, a constant reminder of the many many things we could be thankful for and always found something new to add! I had intended to wrap it up with a family reading of the list and some kind of act of recognition of all those things, but then we had a kitchen reno start, the paper list got rolled up and put in a cupboard and...

Um...

Yeah, I totally forgot about it! But I discovered it again recently so in the spirit of seizing the moment and keeping things simple (see?! I am slowly learning, lol...), I decided to just pull it out after dinner. We read through the Very.Long.List together and then the kids added some new things - Lily then drew pictures on the paper of things she was thankful for, and so did Eli (well, he scrawled!).

We spent some time in prayer, thanking God as a family for the many blessings He rains down on us so richly. For the month of December, I really want us to focus on giving back to others, serving, doing acts of kindness, etc so this turned out to be a nice kick off. We have been richly blessed and we are even more blessed when we focus on giving rather than receiving. Something I deeply desire to impart to my children and something I constantly want and need to remind myself of too.

Disclaimer: These photos were actually taken last week but I didn't post them on that day as something else came up that I posted about. Today was actually a mad crazy day with our flooring getting drilled up, and I didn't take any photos, as I decided to make this my post for today. This is called making my Project 366 work for me and not the other way around! ;)