Giving thanks

Traditions and blessings

“ Enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise! Give thanks to Him; bless His name! For the Lord is good; His steadfast love endures forever, and His faithfulness to all generations.”

Psalm 100: 4-5

Oh what a beautiful season it is!!!! Let me share some photos with you! It was fall then winter arrived and now it’s fall again 🤣😉.

It’s been so beautiful. This is my absolute favorite time of year. This year we get to plan for the holidays and the arrival of a baby soon after! Oh what blessings!!!

I want to share some things we do around this time of year as well as some things we are very thankful for.

Traditions are very important to me. I grew up in a home where my mom put a huge emphasis on traditions and I’m so thankful for each of them. And we will never forget them. Now it is my turn to pass on these traditions and create new ones with my children. And what joy this has brought me. Traditions help us to feel rooted. They give us something to look forward to. They provide memories that will never be forgotten. How important they have been to us especially since moving to a new state where nothing is familiar.

Each year I bring out the thanksgiving journal. I purchased this leather journal when Gus was a baby. We record their handprints in it each year and write down what we are thankful for. This first one was his first thanksgiving. So it’s falling apart ❤️.

They get a little less crafty as time goes on 🤣.

But I cherish them. No matter how they look. I love this tradition. My mom had a thanksgiving binder where we too would write down the things we were thankful for. That’s where this idea came from. I just decided to use a leather journal instead we pull out for thanksgiving and add the kids turkey handprints 😉. It’s a treasure that we will get to look back at for years to come and be reminded of Gods blessings and gifts to us.

We won’t be going to my parents home obviously. Even though that is heart wrenching, we are creating new memories and they are helpful to take away the sting of not seeing my family during the holidays. Plus we were very blessed with a visit from my parents a couple weeks ago and that was incredible. We are also very thankful that Bucks parents live here and we get to spend time with them on Thanksgiving. It would be even harder to not have any family for the holidays so we are very thankful and blessed to have his parents who live here too!!

It was simply the best spending time with Grammy and Papa and showing them where we live!!!

We had a blast and can’t wait for them to come back!!! We love them so much. We are so so thankful for the special time with them.

We decided to make them a little turkey handprint and send it to them…..

It has each of the kids handprints and I wrote what they are thankful for on the “feathers” . Gus also had collected real turkey feathers and we added some of those to the back too! It’s silly but cute 😉.

I sent that to them and then of course we will FaceTime tomorrow. It is hard to be away but we make do with that we have. I am so thankful for FaceTime.

Besides, this is not a time to dwell on what we don’t have or what we are missing. This is a time to dwell on all the blessings we do have. We are so very blessed. We have so much to be thankful for. God is so faithful and so good.

When we forget all that God has done it leads to discontent and more sin. The Israelites forgot God and all He had done for them. Over and over again they forgot. And then that lead to their rejection of Him. They forgot, they complained, they sinned, they turned away. Over and over again. May we not do the same. Do you know how easy it is now a days with social media to see all that we are “missing out on” or don’t have? We must be so very careful, especially today with social media.

“Let this be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord!” Psalm 102:18

May we not forget!!! And may we also not forget to record it somehow so we can talk about with our children and grandchildren!!!

“….and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt , out of the house of slavery.” Deuteronomy 6.

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” James 1:17

Everything is from Him my friends. Everything. It is all His. We are His. Are we thankful? Should we only just express it around this time of year? Absolutely not. It should be always. But it is helpful to really contemplate all of it around this time.

The kids and I are memorizing scripture on giving thanks. We are talking about all that we are thankful for. Even the hard things. Because God uses the hard things for our good and His glory.

We are also reading lots of good books.

Some we own and have collected over the years and some we got from the library.

Here are some other recommendations from friends and Pinterest….

Good food for mind and body!! Reading good books, and listening to good music. I created a thanksgiving playlist on Spotify. By the way, Over the River and Through the Woods is supposed to be a thanksgiving song not Christmas. I see that one song changed it to Christmas.

I also absolutely loved these art prints from Pinterest…..

Thanksgiving in art

We also wanted our local farmers to know how thankful we are for them. So we decided to get them cards…..

I also made some applesauce for the family we got our apples from. Our local farmers that helped provide such a beautiful harvest work so hard. We need to let them know how thankful we are for them and all they do to provide us with nourishing food!!

We decorate with whatever is in season, and with the treasures we find outside as well as dried flowers.

We go to the pumpkin patch and harvest festivals, and go leaf collecting. We also started a new tradition at our church this year and we did a reformation party on the 31st and did a medieval meal and dancing. It was a blast.

We make lots and lots of applesauce to can and have dipped our leaves in beeswax in years past. We didn’t get to the beeswax part this year though and that’s ok!

Usually I am in a hurry to get our Christmas decor up. But not this year. I have been enjoying the harvest decor so much. It’s so beautiful and full of life and color. I will miss it.

And let’s not forget food for the body. 😉 Real nourishing feasts. When it is cold outside I am so motivated to be creative in the kitchen. Bread, soups, stews, roasts, root veggies, pumpkin and apple everything. So so fun. So so yummy. Have I mentioned this season is my favorite? 😉

I’m so thankful for all these things and more. I am so thankful for my wonderful family. Here I will share photos from my friend Lisa at Lisa Rae Photography 😍😍😍😍……..

What a gift these photos are! Even more so the people in them!!!

I am thankful friends. So so thankful. God is good. Life has not been easy by any means. But it has been good. I praise the Lord.

May you have a very blessed and happy Thanksgiving my friends.

Love, Tay

“ Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever!
Let the redeemed of the LORD say so,
whom he has redeemed from trouble

and gathered in from the lands,
from the east and from the west,
from the north and from the south.

Some wandered in desert wastes,
finding no way to a city to dwell in; Hungry and thirsty,
their soul fainted within them.
6Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
7He led them by a straight way
till they reached a city to dwell in.
8Let them thank the LORD for his steadfast love,
for his wondrous works to the children of man!
9For he satisfies the longing soul,
and the hungry soul he fills with good things.” Psalm 107