Thankful Turkeys

I thought and thought about doing something crafty for the girls for Thanksgiving, to remind them what Thanksgiving is about. There are tons of ideas on Pinterest and other places. And I had all the intention in the world to do one of these awesome projects. Most recently as this afternoon. I had big plans.

Then, last night, I was preparing dinner. The kids were "STARRRRRR-VING" and needed some distraction. I had Brooke get 5 pieces of paper. I just made it up as I went along, to give them something (productive) to do while they waited. They traced their hands...then colored their 'turkeys'. (and Brad and I did a turkey hand too ;)

I could've stopped there but I needed more time to warm up the corn and biscuits. :P So then I had them tear the 5th piece of paper in 1/4's and each of them (and us) list 5 things they were thankful for. I love that Brooke kept going and going...In fact, she kept erasing hers and wanting to write more. :)

And Brenna wrote hers all on her own! She needed helpful hints on spelling and shorter words to use. For instance, she said she was thankful for Barkley and Bailey and Bo. I encouraged her to just write "pets" and said it slow enough that she could sound it out and write it out on her own. I helped her spell Brooke and books correctly, but the rest is all hers. And while I would like to say that she is thankful that we have jobs and that people around the world have jobs.... honestly the being thankful for "jobs" only refers to her 'jobs' at school. Her work that she does. Which is still good in my opinion! (and the 'j' is written backwards....very common in early writing)...

Anyway, I was just going to write on their turkeys for them after they had listed out their items...but I was so impressed with their writing and thoughtfulness, I had to include their lists! So we decided to glue them to the back of their turkeys. Again, totally making this up as I go! LOL

Brad and I also did our own. Then we hole punched each one, strung a ribbon through and hung them on the mantle until Thanksgiving. :)

Not a super cute or crafty idea...but really, we never keep all these things anyway. And most important to me is that they did such a great job coming up with stuff and did so good on their lists. Who cares how cutesy it is right?

So today, I'm thankful for my sweet girls. I'm thankful for the nice around-the-table time we had making these turkeys and their thoughtfulness in every aspect of it, no matter how simplistic they were. And I'm thankful for the nice time they had doing it and talking about it and then spending the rest of the night loving each other. :)