Thanksgiving Ideas

Pertaining to my last post, here are a couple ideas I've been given to help celebrate Thanksgiving!

1.) Last Sunday I went to an Activity Day/Young Women fireside. The speaker (Jill Stevens Shepherd) was amazing! She served as a combat medic with the national guard in Afghanistan and then when she returned, she competed and was crowned Miss Utah in 2007. She had such great words of encouragement for the girls! Anyway, one of the things she did while she was serving in Afghanistan was try and bring holiday cheer to the other soldiers. In October she painted some rocks to look like jack-o-lanterns and in November she put up a huge empty tree. She said it was something her mom did with them every year growing up. You put up a big tree on your wall somewhere, and then every day each person writes something they are thankful for on a paper leaf and you stick the leaves on the tree. So by Thanksgiving, your tree is full! I loved this idea, and plan to start it as a tradition in our own family.

2.) Then my friend Stacy shared this other idea with me. You decorate a jar and fill it with slips of paper, one for each day of November leading up until Thanksgiving. Each paper has an activity of ways to show your gratitude for someone or something. So every day you draw a paper from the jar and do that activity with your family. The papers include things like:

"I am thankful for my family" - play a game together, or "I am thankful for pie" - make a pie and deliver it to someone, or "I am thankful for our car" - clean out the car and then go get ice cream cones in it. I love this idea too! Because its fun, you get to do things as a family, and it postpones thoughts of toys and Christmas until after Thanksgiving is over. If you want a copy of this tradition (all the ideas and pictures on little scrolls) just let me know, and I can e-mail it to you!