Thankfulness

Wondering what I was going to do with the "Thankful leaves"? Yep, so was I! I had some ideas from "Pinning" but the general idea was to trace everybody's hands and then make our hands a tree. The idea evolved though when Youssef mentioned how he'd like to do a paper folding picture (like the ones I sell.) He'd like to learn how to do it.. and.. well.. what better way to learn then to jump right in!
I did all the tracing and cutting however. I made a place for our faces to go and the date of course. This is the back side of the paper because that's the side I have to work from.

I found some great pictures of the kids doing their gasp face! If you've seen "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" then you'll get the joke. They thought the gasp scene was hilarious and every time I'd make hamburgers (which became quite often because everyone decided that CHeeeeeeese burgers were the bees knees) they'd do the gasp face. I can't remember laughing so hard in a LONG time as I did when Youssef and I were taking pictures of each other and trying to get the right "gasp" face. Some looked pretty terrible and funny. :} But, finally we settled on a couple good shots.
I didn't get any pictures of us actually doing it. It took all weekend between the two of us WHILE we were decorating our trees and the house. Pretty crazy, but we finished it!
I thought Youssef did a pretty good job. It looks a lot like some of my first ones. I little turbulent and perhaps not quite as smooth as the parts that I did, but I like it. It was fun to do together and take turns on..... except when he used my glue stick. ;]
We hung it in the dinning room so we can see it while we eat. For a while now I've been wanting to teach Lily about Christmas and that it's not about things that SHE gets. Well, I kind of had a revelation. Teaching someone to be unselfish really comes form a different point. We need to learn how to be thankful and grateful for what we already have and for what we get. It seemed like (in years past) that it didn't matter how much or little we got for Lily... it always disappointing her for some reason. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to give someone something good and having them complain or fight over it. When I pulled out the Christmas things and let the girls have the little people nativity to play with guess what they did RIGHT away? They FOUGHT over the baby Jesus. *groan* Besides getting really annoyed at them for fighting, it was even more frustrating to be trying to give them something good and fun and that they wanted and have them be dissatisfied over it.

How often do we as adults do that though? The income isn't *quite* enough or we complain about not having enough time in a day. What we really need to do is learn to manage our time and money and things better. God gives us good things and He wants to see us enjoy them and use them well.

So, we will be leaving our Thanksgiving tree up even though we are decorating for winter and Christmas now instead of Autumn. It's not about making it a point to get or enjoy less things so much as keeping an ongoing grateful attitude for what we have.

---When we are dissatisfied with what little we have now then we can never be satisfied with abundance. If we can be thankful for what we have already then we will be equipped to enjoy more.