A Thanksgiving Tradition I Love – The Thankful Tree

Traditions are like glue holding a family together even after they aren’t really “together” any more. And I love things like that more than ever these days since so many of my kids aren’t snuggled up with me “together” here right now. One tradition I LOVE is our Thanksgiving tradition: our “Thankful Tree.”

Our Thankful Tree Tradition

I love that not only does our Thanksgiving Tree fill our kitchen with gratitude each day in November (I truly believe that gratitude is the complete key for happiness):

…but it is “spreading roots” to wherever our other kids are, and I love that.

Memory Lane with Thankful Trees

Let’s go down memory lane for a minute to talk about our Thankful Tree.

We started out small:

And kept adding kids as well as leaves each year.

These kids kept growing and that tree kept getting more laden down with gratitude:

Yeah, kids sat on the counter for this business, so excuse that…

I mean, come on, gratitude does equal happiness, don’t you think?

We leave a bowl of “empty” leaves on the counter and try to add leaves each new day in November.

Whoa, big kids!

We lived in China one Thanksgiving and sure enough, we made that thing happen there too.

Traditions Can Continue When Kids Start Leaving Home

As kids started leaving we started sending them a Thankful Tree each Thanksgiving with the things we love about them:

Here’s Max in Taiwan with his:

…And Elle and her roommate’s version over in Hawaii:

Here’s a video of switching up our tree a little when we moved:

Love that CHINA was biggest that year:

Over the years we have become much more specific in our gratitude:

This picture is from last year, because our tape isn’t sticking for some reason this year and I have loose branches on the counter right now, but this is how it starts:

…and this is how it ends up:

It’s one of my favorite traditions. I love that we are in the month of THANKS-GIVING!

Happy November!