Still Overflowing with Thanksgiving...

"Let your lives overflow with thanksgiving" Col. 2:6

If I could figure out how to put videos from our camera onto this blog, you could see my precious children signing this verse, as they do every morning. Someone is going to help me figure that out, right? It's too cute.
We're still working on overflowing...the kids have named different things each day that they are thankful for, and it's been fun. But this is truly what I would consider a spiritual discipline to be worked on, as sad as that sounds. It's shameful for us, who have so very much for which to be thankful, to not be. But unfortunately, thankfulness doesn't come naturally. It's harder for some than others. And it's something we need to be cultivating in this house.
I came across an old "thankful journal" of mine that I did faithfully for years! I started this one in particular the day I got engaged to Rusty. I was REALLY thankful for him! (Still am, no doubt about that!!!) And I continued to write at least five things every night that I was thankful for. This was so fun to look back on! And I can see how it really cultivated thankfulness in me during hard times of my teaching career, where I was forced to be thankful daily. We ought to be thankful daily in our prayer time with the Lord. But I tend to go right to intercession. So I am thankful for this season in which God is teaching us about thankfulness!

Here are the kids' responses over the last few weeks:

Emma: school, drawing and making art, Treston, trees to climb on, for going to Nana and Pop-Pop's house, horses, every Tuesday is horse lesson day, my books like Tom Sawyer and Little Women (condensed classics, y'all...she's a reader but not THAT good of a reader!), and my new toothpaste.

Jax: my puppet show...I'm having a puppet show and my puppets are made out of wood, making art things fast, my store called "The Milky Way", my work at my store (located in his room, BTW), and Cody and Owen's Fall Festival, my leg armor I made, Chuck E. Cheese and Old McDonalds and Gattitown, finishing my reader, my shelf in my store.

Justus: my lollipop, my brother whose name is Jax, Emma, God, T-Bear hugging me, Erin's baby, Matt, our whole entire city, elephants and dinosaurs and birds and even God.

Treston: Bible, Da-Da, Dis-Dis (the dog, Disney), God, Pop-Pop, trucks, Mama (I finally made it!), Dis-Dis.

I pray you guys will be overflowing with thankgsgiving today too! I am specifically thankful for my friends, the Feldmans, finalizing their adoption of Isaac today! I'm headed out to share their joy in court this morning! Praise God for adoption. We are thankful for adoption, as always, and most of all that we have been adopted by the King of Kings!