Thanksgiving tradition: changing it up

I've written before about our tradition of a Thanksgiving journal here.

I know that post is missing all the photos. Sorry about that. Here are a couple of photos to show what our Thanksgiving Journal is:



It's what we've done for the past several years as a way to record our gratitude, as a family, over the Thanksgiving season. We added pictures to a spiral-bound notebook, and then we wrote down the things we were thankful for as we reflected upon the previous year.

I love this idea, and especially the fact that we can look back on it from year to year and see, and remember~ God's faithfulness in our lives.

Last year I ordered the photos and they sat in their envelope and we simply never did it. Too busy, too pregnant, too much.

This year we scrapped the Thanksgiving-Journal idea.

I really hope to go back to it some time in the future, but now is not that time.

So this year, we did something a little different. We started with these:


and began making this:



I loved seeing this one:


(Daddy who works for us)

...and clearly someone was abundantly thankful for his


(!)

As I stapled the chain links together, I read each of them aloud. It was really encouraging for me to see how our children have grown in gratitude over the years. They loved this project, and were super excited to see the chain getting longer and longer~ and they truly delighted in coming up with all the things they were thankful for!


It's quite long, actually. We have it temporarily hanging up around our living room...


...but when we get our Christmas tree this weekend, our Thanksgiving chain will become a garland for our tree! [How much do you love that idea? I read about this creative project over at Little Birdie Secrets. We skipped the first part of their idea~ the Thankful Jar~ although it's very cute, too.]

Happy Thanksgiving, friends!