Thanksgiving, what a great holiday! I seem to enjoy it more the older I get. I used to be gun-ho and ready for Christmas the day after Halloween, but now I'm resisting that urge and taking one holiday at a time. We had a great time celebrating Thanksgiving, by decorating the house for it, reading Thanksgiving books a lot, doing FHE's on gratitute and the story of the pilgrims and Thanksgiving, playing the gratitude game and more.
On Thanksgiving Day, we woke up and watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, made regular rolls and orange rolls, and headed out to my Uncle and Aunt's for the Thanksgiving Feast. We had a yummy meal, and talked, watched a movie (kids) and football (the dads), and played together. It was a nice day! I forgot my camera! So I took some photos with my camera.
We also made Thanksgiving cards to send to loved ones. We used paper plates to make pumpkin pie, Emma painted them. We put a cotton ball on for the whipped cream and even sprinkled pumpkin pie spice on it to make it a scented card.
The kids talking about Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving!
President Henry B. Eyring: "Our Father in Heaven commands us to be thankful in all things, and He requires that we give thanks for the blessings we receive. We know that all of His commandments are intended to make us happy, and we also know that to break commandments leads to misery.
So to be happy and to avoid misery, we must have a grateful heart. We have seen in our lives the connection between gratitude and happiness. All of us would like to feel gratitude, yet it is not easy to be consistently grateful in all things in the trials of life. Sickness, disappointment, and the loss of people we love come at times in our lives. Our sorrows can make it hard to see our blessings and to appreciate the blessings God has in store for us in the future.
It is a challenge to count our blessings because we have a tendency to take good things for granted. When we lose a roof over our heads, food to eat, or the warmth of friends and family, we realize how grateful we should have been when we had them.
Most of all, sometimes it is hard for us to be sufficiently grateful for the greatest gifts we receive: the birth of Jesus Christ, His Atonement, the promise of resurrection, the opportunity to enjoy eternal life with our families, the Restoration of the gospel with the priesthood and its keys. Only with the help of the Holy Ghost can we begin to feel what those blessings mean for us and for those we love. And only then can we hope to be thankful in all things and avoid the offense to God of ingratitude.
We must ask in prayer that God, by the power of the Holy Ghost, will help us see our blessings clearly even in the midst of our trials. He can help us by the power of the Spirit to recognize and be grateful for blessings we take for granted."
I've been trying harder to see some of those blessing I often overlook that are not so obvious (family, religion, the atonement, a home, food, etc.), and ask to see all of the blessings, even little ones in my life. As a family, we did this exercise, and each of us named one in each category. It was fun to hear what everyone had to say, from trucks, pizza, kitties, and air conditioning to temples and eternal families.
Try it yourself, and you will see that there are so many things to be grateful for! (:
"Gratitude Challenge
Let’s not just talk about counting our blessings—let’s do it! Write a list of 100 things you are thankful for. If that sounds like it is too many, try this:
Write 10 physical abilities you are grateful for.
- Write 10 material possessions you are grateful for.
- Write 10 living people you are grateful for.
- Write 10 deceased people you are grateful for.
- Write 10 things about nature you are grateful for.
- Write 10 things about today you are grateful for.
- Write 10 places on earth you are grateful for.
- Write 10 modern inventions you are grateful for.
- Write 10 foods you are grateful for.
- Write 10 things about the gospel you are grateful for.
When we make a list like this, we discover that a list of 100 doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of all the things God has given us."
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