Thankful Tree

For the past several years, we've had a family tradition of making a Thankful Tree. Back when we lived in Arizona, Derek went on a business trip one fall to the East Coast. He came back with a beautiful fall leaf for me because he knew how much I missed the fall colors. The leaves are beautiful in Utah in the fall.....in Arizona...not so much. I pressed the leaf and later when we began the Thankful Tree tradition, I decided to use that leaf as a pattern for our leaves. I traced around the real leaf, photocopied it, and Voila! Our Thankful Tree came into being.

Here's the way it works. I make a bunch of copies of the leaves and draw a tree trunk with the words "We Are Thankful For..."on a poster board. At a Family Home Evening in November, we sit down and take turns naming things we're grateful for. We write one thing on each leaf. When we're done, we tape all the leaves on the tree and put it on display until after Thanksgiving. It's a visual reminder of some of our blessings...big and small.

Our kids were very young when we started this tradition. That first Thankful Tree had things like "Legos" (Nate), "My White Blankie" (Parker) and "Disposable Diapers" (Me).

Here are a few shots of the 2008 edition of the the making of the Evans Family Thankful Tree.