Gratitude Redirect

Oh my heavens, I feel like we went from crazy-busy, Halloween insanity to full stop back-to-normal low-key life, and it’s giving me a bit of whiplash!

I mean...we even finished up our inaugural soccer season on Saturday, so now we have our weekends back! (And look who got the sportsmanship medal for the final week. Yay, Chicklet!)

We also managed to handle some household chores on Sunday, so the Halloween decorations are down, and the few Thanksgiving ones we bust out are already up (I know, I know—it’s the ONE holiday I don’t go insane for, decoration-wise, because, like most of the world, I just wanna skip to Christmas!).

I mean...seriously. We’re just so totally back to normal that I almost don’t know what to do with myself (except I have a list a mile long at all times, ha).

And, I’m not gonna lie—it’s a little bit disorienting that for the first time in like, a decade, that we’re not hosting Thanksgiving or Christmas (by choice; it’s all good), so there’s none of that happy kind of stress—but stress, nonetheless—to prep for. 

I mean, we’re just in happy holiday coasting mode for the time being. Really looking forward to doing the season up right and really going NUTS with the decorations, since the house was on the market last December and we were moving and kept things so minimalistic.

So...these lovely in-between weeks are the perfect time to focus on the gratitude of this month with some project and service activities, and just some talk with the kiddos to reinforce our many blessings.

We selected two kiddos through Salvation Army to shop for this season, and I’m really looking forward to engaging the kiddos in the process, this year more than ever.

Each year, their understanding of the disproportionate blessings of their surroundings versus others is a little easier for them to grasp. But it’s still so interesting to watch them try to sort through what it means to be a child who might not have the clothes or toys that they perceive to come standard in life.

Beyond these simple acts of service, I’m looking for ways to just really emphasis gratitude in all things—table conversations, little Thanksgiving projects—in a more amped up way than in years past.

And that goes for me, as well. This year really really put us through the ringer with our move and all its complications and change, and her, we are so, dang blessed as a household that it will great to really focus on that as we close out the year. :)

And in the meantime, I’m sooooo going to enjoy these couple of weeks of normalcy before the Christmas ramp-up. It’s the simple things, amiright???

Happy Super Normal Monday, m’peeps.

Over and out.