Enjoying November

Someone wrote in on my MOMYS group and asked for ideas on celebrating Thanksgiving. This was my reply:

Thanksgiving is our family's chosen holiday. Meaning, we decorate for it and really try to celebrate it. We make baked treats and deliver them around town to the folks who are special to us and have helped us throughout the year. For us, this includes the employees of our local Goodwill store and the library, along with neighbors and friends. Some years the children make handmade cards to send out. We are learning a Thanksgiving hymn this year and memorizing a new psalm of thanksgiving. We try to do a thanksgiving read aloud sometime during the month. The kids dress up as pilgrims or indians when we have our large dinner. I'm always looking for meaningful and fun ideas. We are trying to do one fun or special thing each day this month until thanksgiving. Mostly they are just little things. One day it was to scrape out our pumpkin and cook it. One day will be roasting the seeds we saved. We collected leaves one day and will try waxing them today. Just letting them bake a pumpkin treat counts as one day's special time. It really doesn't have to have bells and whistles to be special to children. Simple pleasures, enjoyed as a family year after year become memories and anticipated fun for the future. This hit me yesterday when we went to a park. My 11, 10, 9 and 7 year old had fun picking up large rocks and dropping them over the walking bridge into the water. They did this over and over again, trying to make the biggest splash. Of course the boys were bombing things and in a battle while doing it and the girls liked pocketing the prettiest rocks and the pretty splash that was made. But the were totally having fun! It was my husband's idea to go to this certain park which was quite a little drive to get to but while collecting rocks my 7 year old dd said, " Mom this really was worth coming to." Sandwiches, pretzels some frisbees, a football and rock throwing, taking a walk, going down a new country road and visiting a Goodwill in a new town made up or special day yesterday. Hey, guess what? I just wrote a new blog post for myself without realizing it. Yeah for multitasking!!