"In this house... we do grateful hearts."

It's the first day of Fall!

We've spent most of the day enjoying the outdoors and spending time with neighbors.  Our houses are pretty close together, and I love how the proximity breeds familiarity and a sense of community.  Saturdays for us are often marked with homemade pancakes, eggs, berries-- a big breakfast.  Luci loves being my sous-chef with the pancakes.  She takes pride in stirring the batter to just the right consistency.  I personally find it hilarious that my 5-year-old actually knows how to stir it just right.  She told me today "keep the lumps, but make sure its all together."  Eva was busy at the stove making her famous scrambled eggs.  She can cook them herself, thanks to her father's lessons, and much to my chagrin that she was in front of a hot stove.  Anyway, today, I was happy she could make them for us.

Breakfast ended a little differently for us today, as it's the first day of fall. In my Pinterest searching (see? there's tremendous value to that little addiction!), I found a wonderful idea of creating a "Thankful Tree" where your family can keep track of things you're are thankful for, and have it displayed in your home.  Instead of simply thinking thankful thoughts in the month of November, I thought it would be great to extend our time of thanks to a season of thankfulness.  I'd rather cultivate in their hearts gratefulness throughout a long period of time, than simply for Thanksgiving.  To do this, I guess we have to model it. ;)  So, for our family, for the next two months, we are going to try to be mindful of what we are thankful for.

We have our little note cards, markers, and the tiniest cutest black clothes pins to attach our notes of thanks to the branches.  We want to try to be more consistently conscious of the things we can be thankful for-- for more than a couple of weeks.  So, hopefully in this season of thankfulness, we will breed in our girls (and ourselves) and attitude of recognizing all that God has provided for us, in so many creative ways.

So far, we are thankful for Lola, Houses/Shelter and Saturday mornings.  I'm so excited to see what the Lord brings to our minds in the next couple of months.  We have so much to be thankful for-- I'm excited to begin having a mind and heart to notice.  This can be our "stone of rememberance" this fall-- a place to recount all that the Lord has done, and continues to do.

While outside the trees will be emptying, this one will be filling.

In this house, we do grateful hearts.

“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.”
Colossians 2:6-7