You can consider yesterday's post a plea...

Scroll down, leave a comment, and let me know what you are thankful for!

I actually had plans for creating this enormously complicated visual feast of all the many things I am thankful for. Instead, I said to the kids this morning, "How about we put up the Christmas tree?"

You can imagine the enthusiasm I was met with.

So I took it a step further, "How about we leave all our old ornaments in the box, go out and do some scavenging, and MAKE decorations for an entirely nature oriented tree."

That too, sounded like lots of fun.

It was cooollllddd this morning, but we returned home with bags of pine cones, acorns, walnuts, seed podlings we have yet to identify, and various fall leaves still showing a few of their colors.

Then I said, "Instead of putting the tree in the same spot as last year, why don't we rearrange the living room and create an entirely new spot for it?"

By golly if they didn't think that was a good idea, too.

By six o'clock this evening we were all dragging. I was seriously considering an early bedtime. The living room is clean, clean, clean! We moved and sorted and threw stuff out and moved and sorted some more. Only the oldest was still with me in the end, but it was all worth it when they finally started setting up that tree.

I don't really have a sense of how our ornaments look. It's pretty dark in there since we unplugged our only lamp in the moving and haven't yet found a good place for it. It's a unique holiday experience, at least. We had lots of fun with paints and the glue gun... I made a garland of fall leaves that's at least eight feet long.

Anyway, still some giving thanks activities for us to come this weekend. I'll post my visual feast another day... maybe some pictures of our tree, as well.