Our Thankful Tree

We Bears have a lot to be thankful for, and though we try to teach the girls to think about that daily rather than once a year, a cute craft to reinforce the concept never hurts!

This morning, I drew a tree on brown butcher paper and had Keira cut it out. With a little spelling help from me, she wrote "Our Thankful Tree" on the trunk. I asked her to write down things she's thankful for on die-cut leaves; her first idea was the Easy-Bake Oven she's hoping to get for Christmas. Hey, kid--it's a thankful tree, not a wish list tree! Maybe this project was more necessary than I had thought...

After some explanation of what "thankful" means and some examples of what I'm thankful for (my family, my job, having a car to drive and a house to live in...), she came up with some ideas of her own:

1) Yummy dinners
2) Thankful tree (how meta!)
3) My swing (the child does love to swing outside and is beyond stoked that she doesn't need anyone to push her anymore)
4) Lodi (Credence Clearwater Revival bemoaned being stuck there; Keira can't wait to go back!)
5) Fancy Nancy bed
6) Friends


Meanwhile, Ellie decorated her leaves with crayons. When I asked her, "And what makes you feel happy, Ells?" her immediate answer was, "Having a nice attitude." Ha! I guess you can tell we have lots of talks with her about what a nice attitude entails, the reasons for which can be seen in my previous post! Her next answer was "Daddy." I'll second that one!


Here's what our tree looks like now, though it'll get more leafy ("Both fine answers, but we were looking for leafy. Leafy." -Phoebe, "Friends") as we continue to add to it each day:


As for me? After a rough week at school, I'm incredibly thankful to have the next three weeks off! My partner needed to trade some days, so she's working my days for the next two weeks. We're already off the entire week of Thanksgiving, too...and then the following week, for the first time in 6 years, I'll make a cameo as a full-time teacher. Eek!

I'm also thankful for the totally hilarious things the girls say. Yesterday, Ellie randomly told me, "Eggs are not for eating. They're for opening and looking at baby birds!" A few days ago, Keira suddenly said, giggling, "What if there was a jack-in-the-box with a big foot inside, and it would come out and kick you in the butt?" Bear and I are never bored with these girls around!

Speaking of Bear, I couldn't have come up with a better husband and dad if I'd built him from scratch myself. He's awesome at everything he does, he comes home from hours of work and traffic ready to play Super Soccer Kick or read stories to the girls, and he was waiting with a foofy wine cooler in hand when I came home from a particularly crummy day on Thursday. He's the coziest, the funniest, the sweetest, and the all-around Beariest Bear in the world, and all three of us are beyond grateful for him!