Giving Thanks
When my children were younger, I spent many hours volunteering my time with cheerleading, boy scouts and girl scouts. I loved being involved in the things that they enjoyed. It kept us busy and as a parent, I knew what was going on in the lives of my children and their friends.
Girl Scouts seemed to take up a lot of our time, my son seemed to be a girl scout before he was old enough to be a boy scout. He never complained the meetings, field trips or just hanging out with all the older girls. For the years that I was a Girl Scout leader, things became routine throughout the year and even some traditions grew out of that.
For the Thanksgiving Holiday, our troop would host a thanksgiving meal for whatever family members wanted to join us. Everyone would bring a dish to share and there was always plenty of food, conversation and fun for all. Since religion is always such a touchy subject, we did not say a prayer. But, everyone would stand in a circle, around the table, hold hands and one by one we would say what we were thankful for. It was wonderful to see these young girls dig into their hearts to find something to say. It was obvious that this was not the norm for anyone, but we all did it.
As my kids are older now and we are not involved in any of these activities, we have taken this tradition to our family. Because we have such a large family gathering and dinner is buffet style we all gather around the food and one by one our loved ones now do this. I truly love watching the young children tell us what they are thankful for. As a parent, I truly hope this a tradition that my children will pass on to theirs one day.
