Gratitude Tree

Happy Thanksgiving! We got together with two other families, the Jensen's and the Bentley's. There was delicious food, lots of kiddos, and good company. The sweet potato dish had a new yummy twist this year by combining them with orange juice, delicious!

 Guess what's in the brown paper bag?

Apple Pie!
It works like a charm to bake it in a brown paper bag (tried it twice now). I found the recipe on King Arthur Flour's blog. 

Our morning activity (besides pie baking and potato mashing) was creating our huge gratitude tree. Our prophet, Thomas S. Monson gave a great talk in October entitled Consider the Blessings. To sum up, he suggested that we count our blessings, great and small and write them down. Our little family has been feeling so blessed. If you have a hard time thinking about your many blessings, use this 10 x 10 chart. Come up with ten items in the following ten categories: {1- Physical Abilities. 2-Material Possessions. 3-Living People 4-Deceased People. 5-Nature. 6-Today (as in ten things you are thankful for today). 7-Places. 8-Modern Inventions. 9-Foods. 10-Gospel/Spiritual.} You'll easily come up with 100 things you're thankful for. Here is what our gratitude tree looks like. We actually have a ton of leaves (aka everything we're thankful for) but still haven't hung them on our branches yet. It's a good thing gratitude can span through every month and every day, not just November :)  We'll keep plugging away at our tree, and post a photo when it doesn't look like the wind has blown all the leaves off :)

Since Thanksgiving this year fell on the 22nd - here is a quick list of 22 reasons we are grateful today:

1. Papa, Mama, Sawyer, & Jack - together and happy!
2. Comfortable Home
3. Reliable Vehicle (Sawyer has named it Rocket Ship in honor of Little Einsteins)
4. George's Job - being able to provide for our family AND do what he loves
5. Our Health
6. Our Freedom
7. Sunshine
8. Morning Bike Rides
9. The Gospel of Jesus Christ
10. Food
11. Happy Days
12. Baba & Dido
13. Grandma & Grandpa
14. Aunts, Uncles, & Cousins
15. Friends
16. Visitors 
17. Ocean
18. Mountains
19. God's Creations - Nature
20. Learning 
21. Comfortable Bed - especially when it is combined with sleep ;)
22. Books - reading to our boys