_: Story of the Thankful Box

This is our Thankful Box and here is the story of how it got started...

While I was reading a copy of the Ensign one evening at the end of December, I came across an article that caught my eye. The article was about this family that created a box and they called it the thankful box. Everyday during the Thanksgiving and Christmas season, everyone in the family wrote down on a small piece of paper something they were thankful for that day. On Christmas, they sat down and opened the box to read the little notes that everyone wrote. It was a really neat experience for them and they realized all the many things they had to be thankful for...so much so that they made it a new family tradition to do every year around the holidays. It has since brought a new deeper meaning to that family and they are more grateful for the everyday things.

I told Ryan about the story and gave him my thoughts on it and how I thought I would be a good idea for us to do the same thing this family did and create a Thankful Box. Only I didn't want to wait til the holiday season again, I wanted to start it right away. Because of the many hardships we have faced the past 2 years, its hard to find things to be thankful for everyday, at least I think so and I knew that I needed to be reminded of those things more often than just around Thanksgiving and Christmas.

So around mid-January we dug out a smaller box and I decorated it up to look pretty and wrote "Thankful Box" all the way around it on every side. That way no matter what angle you have in the room you would know what it was. Once it was finished and little piece of paper set next to it, the writing began.

Here is how we have made it special to us. Instead of waiting til the end of the year to open it and read the notes, we changed the 'rules' up a bit and have decided that at the first Monday of every month we will have a family home evening where we sit down and open the box to read all the little thankful notes that each other wrote during the past month. This past Monday was our first time going through the box. It was a really cool experience for us and we plan on continuing it for a long time and making it our own little family tradition.

Here are a few of the things we were thankful for last month...