Chain of Gratitude

In about mid-October David and I sat down with a notebook and pen and discussed family holiday traditions. We realized that before we know it, Ryenne is going to be a big girl, and we don't want to blink and find that we've missed out on some wonderful holiday traditions! That night we talked and talked about traditions David grew up with, traditions I grew up with, and what kinds of traditions we want to keep and/or start in our own little family.
One of the new traditions that we thought we would try is a "Chain of Gratitude" for Thanksgiving. I personally feel like Thanksgiving is such a special holiday mostly because of the family and friends that you get to spend it with and the delicious food you get to enjoy, but sometimes it's easy to overlook the THANKS part. We came up with this idea so that we would be building up our gratitude all the way until the actual day of Thanksgiving, and consequently being a lot more intentional on just what Thanksgiving is all about.

The Chain of Gratitude is a simple enough little ritual that we'll do every day of November up until Thanksgiving. David, myself, and Ryenne will each write down one thing that we are thankful for on a strip of paper daily, then tape the ends of each strip to make a paper "Chain of Gratitude" that will help keep our focus on all of the things that we have to be thankful for.
Of course Ryenne is still too young to verbalize what things she is thankful for, but it's still very obvious which things are high on her gratitude list ;) It's good for us as parents to think about things from her perspective too, and what might make her little heart extra full and grateful.

Right now the chain is pretty short (not even really a "chain"), but it'll grow pretty quickly and by the time Thanksgiving rolls around we will have a lot of things written down that we are grateful to God for! And yes - grateful TO GOD for! Because HE really is the one we are thankful to! Without Him we would have nothing - and goodness knows that we have seen first hand this year just how well God provides for our every need!
Happy Thanksgiving! (I still can't believe it's NOVEMBER!!!)