Gratitude is the music of the heart, when its chords are swept by the breeze of kindness. ~Author Unknown

I have written a lot about gratitude on this blog and am going to continue to do so.  As I was building my new list, I wanted to try and include some weekly features for a couple of reasons.  First of all, it will keep me writing. I can always tell when I have not been writing as much.  I have come to need it and don't feel 'me' unless I have enough time to write.  Second, I thought it would be good for you, my readers, to know that there is at least a few posts coming each week. 

I am planning on getting all fancy with a blog button and everything for my once-a-week gratitude post but my technical support is currently otherwise occupied.  Until then...you will just have to have a regular old post without any fancy buttons.

The last two Christmas seasons, I have gone a little over the top with my planning.  In wanting to be intentional, I overscheduled myself with December Daily items so that we were doing something each day leading up to Christmas.  I made (and cursed most of the way through) a super cute countdown calendar and filled it with activities that were great ideas the end of November but less doable as the crunch time of the holidays took hold. (Let's just say that more than once I took advantage of the fact that Taelin couldn't read.  Like last year when I pulled the day's activity and it said, "Make a snowglobe" and I read to her "Watch The Polar Express".) At the end of December, I print off pictures for the albums, did a bit of journaling and packed them away.

I told myself this year I was going to do it a bit differently.  Taelin and I were going to generate the list together of things we wanted to do.  No dates attached, unless necessary, and no elaborate December Daily album; "I am just going to include it in my Project Daily album," I said to my friend's Peggy and Betty who if reading can already tell where this is going.

This last weekend, we took down all the Christmas decorations and have been slowing unpacking them.  Today, Taelin found the last two years worth of December Daily albums.(Here is my 2011 album!)  She started to look through them and all that time I spent planning, prepping, photographing became all worth it.  She sat and looked at each picture and wanted me to read her the words.  She noticed how much shorter her hair was last year and remembered the trip to the fire station to deliver the toys.  She said, "Can we do that again?" and "We can't forget to do that!"

Melt.  My.  Heart.

So, after looking through the last two years, we generated a list for this year.  I used the printable from this blog post to record our final list.  There are no dates, except for where appropriate, so if we want to do three things in one day we can.  It is so cool that she is getting old enough to be part of these conversations...

I am sure there are things that we will do that aren't on here.  We are volunteering to wrap presents this Friday for a service project my work is doing and she remembered after making the list that last year we bought coats to donate to another organization.

I am so grateful for having the past records of our Decembers. I am so grateful for my amazing little girl; her intelligence, her thoughtfulness, her humor. (And I am grateful I found the Christmas paper that I bought a earlier this year because I am pretty sure I am making another December Daily album this year!)