I wanted to put our Thankful Tree up on November 1st, but we finally hung it on the back of our front door Monday.

In case you can’t tell from the photo, I drew a tree on a large sheet of brown kraft paper that had been used as packing material in a box we received.  (Extra “green” points for recycling!)  I found leaf patterns online; the girls traced them onto construction paper, I cut them out, and we got busy writing on the leaves things for which we are grateful.  In fact, I already need to make more so that we can fill up our tree!

Leaves the girls have added include family, salvation, seasons, books, and laptops. Some of my own contributions are prayer and sisters – for their sake and mine, since my sweet sister celebrated her birthday yesterday.

I hope to make this a Thanksgiving tradition – and it’s one that won’t pack on the pounds like the Old Fashioned Thanksgiving Stuffing and Strawberry Pretzel Salad that I plan to make next week!

Vacation (noun):  A period of time devoted to pleasure, rest, or relaxation.

We were on vacation last week at one of my favorite places in the world – the mountains of Tennessee.

We explored old churches and graveyards….

waded in a cool mountain stream, just above a small waterfall….

spent hours playing with cousins….

and had a few quiet moments to ourselves.

It was wonderfully refreshing!!

Do you have vacation plans for the summer?

It’s a box I hadn’t opened in years.

It overflows with letters, cards, and notes sent to my husband and I during the pregnancy and birth of our first child. They’re from family members, church friends, fellow teachers and co-workers, former students, and ball players on basketball teams my husband coached.

While the child that they commemorate lived only 7 1/2 months – all of them in my womb – this visible outpouring of thoughtfulness shows just how many lives she touched. So few of the people who penned these sentiments ever saw her, yet their words of sympathy and encouragement touch me now maybe even more than then.

Those days were spent surviving, knowing that the journey of carrying this baby would end in her death. Thirteen years later, I have the time to consider each expression of kindness and appreciate the many thoughts and prayers on our behalf. Some of the names scrawled on the pages are those of people I’ll never see again here, for they’ve already joined our little girl in Heaven.

I did not fully recognize during those months the work that God was doing in our lives. Yet I know that He always acts in a way that it is ultimately for our good and His glory. And these bits of paper, that bring to mind so many dear faces and cherished memories, remind me that the messages of encouragement we share with others may have a more lasting impact than we’ll ever know.

Spontaneity is not my middle name. If my family wrote a hundred words to describe me, it wouldn’t make the list. I am a planner who embraces a schedule with all the details arranged ahead of time.

On Friday afternoon, my husband called to say he was on his way home – and would our daughters and I like to leave in half an hour for a drive to the beach and dinner out. My reply? “We’ll be ready and waiting.”

While our walk on the beach was a bit chilly, the glow of the setting sun on the shore was beautiful.

Supper was also delightful as we tried a local diner with a menu full of comfort food – and the Boston Cream Cake we shared for dessert was one of the best I’ve ever had.

There’s a lot to be said for being organized and planning ahead. But I’m learning that spontaneity can be a very good thing as well.

So I’m going to try to do better; to occasionally throw the schedule to the wind and take a moment to create spontaneous joy for someone else.

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether this happens at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps on learning not only remains young, but becomes constantly more valuable regardless of physical capacity.” ~Harvey Ullman

In my final post about focus for the new year, I wanted to share a list of projects I’d like to try in the coming months. I was inspired by Crystal’s post on 12 Do-It-Yourself Projects I Plan to Attempt in 2011 and hope to learn some new skills (and probably attempt a few things that I will never repeat!).

January: Cook homemade spaghetti sauce (Got a recipe to share for this one?)

February: Post a vlog

March: Make homemade doughnuts

April: Plant a container garden with cherry tomatoes and cucumbers (I tried the tomatoes a couple of years ago, but hope to do better with them this time.)

May: Learn how to play chess

June: Select a song and learn to play it well on the piano (I have basic musical knowledge, but very rarely sit down and use the piano.)

July: Read my digital camera manual, along with a couple of photography books or blogs, and learn to take better photos

August: Make my own yogurt

September: Bake homemade bagels

October: Publish an e-book

November/December: Knit scarves for my daughters’ dolls. (Yes – it may take two months, considering my lack of skill at any handiwork!)

What’s something new you’d like to try in 2011?

photo courtesy public domain pictures

Traditions are one of the things that make Christmas my favorite holiday.

The weekend after Thanksgiving, we make a family trip to Lowes and buy a Frasier fir. Once it’s been put in the tree stand and correctly positioned in front of the living room window, I wrap the strands of clear lights around it.

While I’m taking a very long time to arrange the lights just so (yes, I have perfectionistic tendencies), I give our daughters the boxes of Christmas ornaments, which they carefully unwrap and spread around the room. It’s almost like they’re seeing old friends again, recalling when the handmade ornaments were crafted, asking where some of my old ornaments came from – and, to keep it realistic, spending a few minutes arguing about who will hang which ornaments on the tree!

Nearly all of our ornaments have a particular memory of an event or a person attached to them. There are some from students I taught when I was an elementary school teacher; some that were gifts from coworkers in my days as an administrative assistant; baby-themed ornaments, since all of our daughters were born in December; and the ever-increasing number of ornaments that our girls have made in art class or at Sunday School in years past.

So far this year we’ve added two new ornaments; I had each of the girls choose an ornament to purchase during our Thanksgiving trip to Walt Disney World. For a number of years, these will hang on our tree, but I assured our children that these will be given to them to be placed on their own Christmas tree in their own home some day.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting older or that I’m giving in more to my sentimental side, but the grand Christmas trees I’m looking at in my home decor magazines, with their color-coordinated, perfectly-spaced ornaments and matching ribbon, aren’t nearly as beautiful to me as our family tree with its ever growing assortment of memory-making ornaments.
What ornaments make your Christmas tree special?

God’s hand is truly at work in every detail of our lives.