I am taking the whole write down what you're grateful for to another level...muahaha This is a Thanksgiving tradition I know my kids will LOVE. They get to bury the thankful jar and then dig it up the next year. It will be fun to read what we were thankful when we dig up the Thanksgiving Capsule next year. I am going to let the family know what the jar is for and let them know what time we will be burying it. I will give them a good chunk of time to do it in that way some real pondering can be done and no one will feel rushed.
Choose an airtight container that won't decay over the course of a year. Also find a way to mark the spot where your time capsule is buried. I just used scarp booking paper that had a white backing so it will be easier to see what you wrote. That's it, pretty simple and straight forward!
As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. - John F. Kennedy
Life is crazy and hectic and it's so important to make time for gratitude. I don't have everything I want but I do have everything I need and for that I count myself very blessed. I hope this Thanksgiving we will all take some time to really ponder on what we are truly grateful for and let those feelings flood our hearts. Gratitude turns what we have into enough.
In the spirit of gratitude I say thank you to anyone who has visited my blog and shown support in anyway. This blog is really an extension of me and I love to interact with you all and hope you enjoy your visits here. THANK YOU for all the kindness you have shown me :)
Would love to know what your favorite Thanksgiving tradition is or your favorite gratitude quote.
It's almost Halloween! I have been wanting to come up with some Halloween ideas that will help others and well one kinda just fell into my lap. My husbands cousin commented on one of my blog posts about some Halloween service they used to do growing up...and of course the light went on in my head and I asked her to do a post about it. We may not think of Halloween as one of those holidays that is service focused but I don't think it should be any different then the others, it should just get us warmed up for Thanksgiving and Christmas, right!? The idea she gives would be great for family night or any other night of the week! So get to it you witches, fairies and princesses!
I was really touched by this post, it made me tear up, I know I'm a softy. This post is just exactly perfect for my blog and I couldn't be happier with it. Thank You Marquette! She blogs over at Pinstrosity (with my SIL The Divine Miss Em) if you want to check it out. If you like Pinterest you will love Pinstrosity.
Portal, AZ
Portal, AZ
"In June 2001, just a few months before I turned 15, my family moved from the Albuquerque area to a tiny little town, Portal, AZ, in the Chiricahua Mountains. I wasn't too happy with the move at the time, and neither was the community. They did not like outsiders coming in and were quite ornery towards us on a number of occasions. As Portal has a very high percentage of retired and elderly people in its tiny population, we were pretty much the only kids around. All my little brother had to do was lean on a tree for someone to get after my mother, “We don’t let our kids climb the trees in our town.” It was a trying time for all of us, and I know my teenage anger at being uprooted didn't help matters very much either.
Halloween in Edgewood before the Portal years
Halloween time arrived and the 5 of us kids wanted to go trick-or-treating (I've never outgrown trick-or-treating…even now). Mom explained to us a few times that the people in Portal weren't used to having kids our age around and that they wouldn't be ready for us and that it would probably upset them, so we couldn't go trick-or-treating that year. But, being the wonderful and genius mother she is, she came up with an idea that has stuck with us from that time onward. She used Halloween and trick-or-treating as a time to teach us to serve. We (mostly my mother I’m sure) baked up some breads and cinnamon rolls on Halloween and got dressed up in our costumes and then we picked out 3-4 houses we wanted to visit. Mom explained that we were going to go reverse trick-or-treating and give out goodies rather than ask for them. I remember thinking this was a dumb idea because no one liked us and it seemed weird to do something nice for the people who were being ornery towards us. Thankfully my mother didn't give me a choice in the matter and so the 5 of us kids piled in the van and mom drove us off down the road.
We pulled up to the first house and the other 4 kids excitedly ran up to the door, and mom gently pushed me along behind as I carried the goodies. We knocked on the first door and when the lady answered it there was a look of surprise and then panic. “Oh no! It’s Halloween and I don’t have any candy!” Mom then explained that we weren't asking for candy, rather we wanted to deliver fresh homemade (still hot) bread as our reverse-trick-or-treating. The woman’s look of confusion lingered for a few seconds and then she broke into a huge smile. She thanked us for the bread and wished us a Happy Halloween. The reaction was the same at the 2nd house…momentary confusion, then panic, then surprise and finally happiness. By this time I had finally gotten caught up in the idea of what we were doing and I was excited to stop at the last 2 houses. We got to the 3rd house and the reaction was the same. At this third house though was the gentleman that we planned on visiting last. He was surprised by the visit as well, but seemed a little awkward and very quickly excused himself to go home. We thought that was a little odd, but decided to stop at his house anyway. We got there and knocked on the door and he and his wife answered, with little baggies in hand ready for us. The gentleman had seen what we were doing at the previous home and had run home so that he and his wife would have time to look through their kitchen and pantry to see what they could put together for us. They were so gracious and kind and told us how impressed they were with what we were doing. We were a little surprised by this reaction as his wife had been one of those that had been especially ornery towards us. We thanked them for our goody bags (I think each bag had a hard candy, a cookie, and some licorice in it) and headed home. We thought that was it…Halloween was done and no more would be heard of it.
Portal, AZ St. Patrick's Day parade
Little did we know that phone calls were flying across the community with word of what had transpired. A few people the next day asked why we didn't come to their house; they had received the phone call and searched their house for what they could give us when we came. They weren't upset that we hadn't given them anything; they were just disappointed that they couldn't give us what they had ready. So we went out the next night and visited 3 or 4 more homes delivering goodies. After this we still had people in the community that were less than amiable, but the general attitude towards us changed from dislike to tolerance and in some cases to friendship.
For the next few Halloweens the tradition was continued with whichever kids remained at home. Three Halloweens later my family had moved again and even though the reception in the community was better than in Portal, the tradition was continued.
Having fun in Portal!
I will forever be grateful to my mother for the lesson that she taught me then and the tradition of kindness that she started.Service isn't about helping only those you like or those whom it is convenient to serve. Service is about loving your fellow men…even those that don’t like you. We saw the effect it had on the people we visited and on the surrounding community. I saw the effect it had on my as my heart was softened from the angry 16 year old to the happy and excited young woman. A Halloween doesn't go by that I don’t think about that year and what I learned.
Well I hope you enjoyed this post! I sure did!
What Halloween service do you do??? Do you have any fun Halloween traditions in your family? We live in a neighborhood where Trick of Treating isn't done, the houses are too far a part to be worth it anyway. I know there are some in the neighborhood who would enjoy a visit from the kids in costumes and and yummy treats. It's a killer combination!
Traadition!!! Tradition! As I thought about this post and be warned I am kinda in a odd mood today. I thought of Fiddler On The Roof, tell my you didn't!? So you guessed it this post is about tradition... and routine.
Routines can be hard to get into but when we do life seems to run a lot smoother. Not everything about life has to be routine of course there always needs to be room for spontaneity. I have thought about this a lot this week and have done parts of a kindness routine for a while with my daughter I just want to add to it. I also want there to be a tradition of kindness and service in our family and I believe this is one way to start that. As you read about what we are doing think about your day and where you can fit in a few minutes here and there for this. Here is what it looks like for us...
On our drive to the bus stop. I talk to her about finding ways to help or do something kind for someone else. I try and give her a few ideas and ask her to brainstorm and think of at least one way she can do something for someone else in her day.
When we get out of the van to let her on the bus I remind her again. By saying something like "remember to try and find something nice you can do for someone else." ( I asked her to let me take a pic and she could hear the bus and got all nervous)
When I pick her up from school we have a 12 minute ride home. This is a great time to ask her about her day and what she did for someone else. I think it's super important to try and connect with your kids while they are young and get them talking to you about their day. Try asking questions they can't just say "yes" for "no" to. Like "what was the best part of your day?" Or "What made you sad today?" "Who were you able to help today?" etc etc. I would LOVE for you to share any ideas here, getting kids to open up about their day can be tough. Though I seem to be making progress this year, yea :)
The last step in the routine is to chat about it again at dinner time with the whole family. This is the part I have yet to do but am going to start doing. Dinner is also super great for family connectedness a great tradition in and of itself. I am also going to make a kindness jar though I am going to involve the kids in naming it and decorating it. The more input they have in this routine the more successful it is likely to be so call it whatever you like kindness jar, warm fuzzies jar etc. Their good deeds can be written down and put in a fun jar or little fuzzies or whatever suites your fancy Dinner time is when we will add to our jar. Would love to see what you come up with, if you do this I REALLY want to see it so upload a pic to The SIP project Face Book page and then I can share it. (This post is super long so I am going to pin jar ideas onto The SIP project board I have on Pinterest and put links to them on The SIP project Face Book page) I think it would be fun to to have a special family day somewhere the kids love to go when the jar gets filled. You could also do a sticker chart instead of a jar if you kids are more into stickers. Be creative and have fun with it!
I tried to find a picture of a family having a food fight or things just a little chaotic at dinner but came up empty on that front but I did find these and had to share...
Food fight...da dun dun shpun!
Here is my theory with this routine I am not nagging or getting upset when she comes home and tells me she didn't help anyone that day it doesn't mean it's fruitless! We sow the seeds and nurture them and we don't always see the fruits of our labors immediately, I can't think of an instance where I have anyway. I do know that starting these traditions will be a blessing to my family especially as my children get older. Oh...and I imagine at some point my kids will start asking me what I did which will motivate me to look beyond myself more often too a win win.
Here is my other thought. My dad is a mechanic and his world was all about cars while I was growing up. Anywhere we went with him as we drove around he would talk about makes and models that were driving near us and tid bits of info about them. I never thought about it growing up that was just life, I just listened but I noticed that I ended paying attention to cars. Friends would have no clue what car their parents or anyone else for that matter was driving and I would be like duh...it's a '99 Honda Civic how could you not know or notice that! It hasn't changed I still do it to this day. My point is that as we routinely bring up "hey, did you do something nice for someone else today?" and talk about what they did it will become ingrained in them and at some point you won't need to say anything it will just be who they are...IF you consistently do it.
I have thought about this story countless times over the 3 years since I heard it and is what inspired this whole routine, I was really struck by the simplicity of it...
"A few years ago I read an article written by Jack McConnell, MD. He grew up in the hills of southwest Virginia in the United States as one of seven children of a Methodist minister and a stay-at-home mother. Their circumstances were very humble. He recounted that during his childhood, every day as the family sat around the dinner table, his father would ask each one in turn, “And what did you do for someone today?”1The children were determined to do a good turn every day so they could report to their father that they had helped someone. Dr. McConnell calls this exercise his father’s most valuable legacy, for that expectation and those words inspired him and his siblings to help others throughout their lives. As they grew and matured, their motivation for providing service changed to an inner desire to help others.
Besides Dr. McConnell’s distinguished medical career—where he directed the development of the tuberculosis tine test, participated in the early development of the polio vaccine, supervised the development of Tylenol, and was instrumental in developing the magnetic resonance imaging procedure, or MRI—he created an organization he calls Volunteers in Medicine, which gives retired medical personnel a chance to volunteer at free clinics serving the working uninsured. Dr. McConnell said his leisure time since he retired has “evaporated into 60-hour weeks of unpaid work, but [his] energy level has increased and there is a satisfaction in [his] life that wasn’t there before.” He made this statement: “In one of those paradoxes of life, I have benefited more from Volunteers in Medicine than my patients have.”2There are now over 70 such clinics across the United States.
Of course, we can’t all be Dr. McConnells, establishing medical clinics to help the poor; however, the needs of others are ever present, and each of us can do something to help someone."
Do you have any traditions of kindness in your family? I would love to hear about them!
If you have a Pin board on kindness or a similar topic let me know I would love to follow you.
