Gratitude

I need to write a post about our trip to Dallas for the BYU v. TCU game that we went to last weekend, but all the pictures I want to use are on Chris's phone not mine, so it will have to wait til later when I can get all of those pictures from him. Instead... I'll blog a few of my thoughts on something else.

Gratitude.

It seems like every year in November I think a lot about gratitude. I think it was one November when I started a gratitude blog, that lasted exactly 10 posts.

Last week for Activity Days we read excerpts from this talk by President Monson about gratitude. As we read it we talked about reasons why we should be grateful for the six specific things/people that President Monson says we should be sure to show gratitude for. It was AWESOME to hear some of the girls talk about why they were grateful for their moms/dads/friends/teachers/our Savior. I was even more excited when they said "could we write thank you letters to people sometime". Little did they know, that is already our plan for our next activity. I LOVE when they suggest ideas that I've already scheduled, makes me feel good knowing I'm planning stuff they want.

Then we made gratitude journals. Which really just means that they raided my stack of 12x12 scrapbook paper (i wish they had taken more, I need to get rid of some of this stuff, and it is perfect designs for them...) and we folded it over the front cover of a composition journal that I bought after back to school sales for 40 cents a piece (love it!). After helping them spell gratitude about 20 times, they all had finished projects. I didn't get pictures of any of their journals, but here is mine:

On the first page we glued in part of Alma 34:38, the part that says we should live in Thanksgiving daily. I challenged them to write at least one thing every day that they were grateful for, or the equivalent of 7 things each week if they forgot a day. They each started writing things that they were grateful for as well. It was a pretty good activity. These really are sweet girls, and I am so grateful that I have the chance to spend time with them each month!