Music And Words

My favorite part of Thanksgiving is probably the 'thankful circle', where we each share what we are thankful for while sitting... in a circle. Not only is this meaningful and thought provoking it is unbelievably adorable to find out the creative, insightful and off-the-wall things that my children are thankful for.

This year Shem asked if, rather than listing only a few things we were thankful for, we could take our time listing all the many things we felt we wanted to voice our gratitude for. This seemed like an inspired idea so we all agreed, little did we know how many things children are grateful for! As our Thanksgiving dinner slowly grew cold Shem, Emma, Ella and Owen spent well over an hour listing their often silly but always heartfelt gratitude for the world around them. Here are just a tiny selection of some of my favorites.

Shem: All nine planets (attempting several times to list them all but somehow always missing Mercury) but most especially Earth and Pluto, water (which was repeated at least four times), our many pets, rivers, streams and oceans, metal, books but not paper (because it meant trees were being harvested) but yet still paper, kind of, because he really likes to draw, and his compound family.

Emma: Her Godparents Ash and Derek, all her pets (including three horses a distant uncle told her she could share with him five years ago), all the mythical creatures (each was named one at a time, from centaurs to dragons and chimeras to wraiths), both the Greek and Egyptian pantheon of gods (also listed one at a time, including what they are gods of and some myths as well), music and Pluto (who kept popping up and whose planet-hood was vehemently defended, because as Emma says "A planet's a planet, no matter how small").

Ella: Animals (which each deserved their own individual mention), nature, hippies and peace, Pluto (naturally), words and numbers. Much of Ella's time was also spent espousing the many things she was not grateful for which include: pollution, mean people, people that hurt animals, and especially God whom she claims stole Emma's boca burger.

Owen: Was first and foremost grateful for himself "me", followed by "you", the heart on Mommy's shirt, his family (repeated even more often than Shem's water), aliens and monsters, haunted houses and ghosts, Frankenstein, the tooth fairy, Christmas, the guitar, leafs, his family, Pluto (because it just wouldn't make sense if he hadn't), dinosaurs and animals, himself... oh yeah, and his family.