Gratitude

 

For sun and rain

For grass and grain

For all who toil

On sea and soil 

That we may 

Eat this daily food

We give our loving thanks

To thee

Traditional Waldorf Verse 

 In Canada we celebrated Thanksgiving this weekend. For our family, we begin our gratitude rituals a week before our feast. We start by spending time together collecting branches for our gratitude tree. Then, after I have cut the paper leaves, we sit down and write out all the things we are thankful for. We of course include things like family, food, freedom, our home but with a three year old helping we also have leaves that say sunflowers and playgrounds. The writing out of gratitudes is quickly becoming my favorite part of Thanksgiving. Finally, we hang the leaves from the branches of the gratitude tree. We read the leaves to ourselves each time we pass it.

Our Thanksgiving is always spent with our extended family. It's one of the three annual holidays when we all gather together and share a big meal. Our day begins early. When I was at the market I noticed a local company that makes natural flavored almond milk. I had to grab a bottle of pumpkin pie milk for our meal. Then we prepared a turkey with cranberry rosemary stuffing, acorn squash with honey ginger and nutmeg, garlic mashed potatoes, tomato fennel gratin, roasted brusssels sprouts with yogurt dijon dressing, massaged kale salad and the traditional pumpkin pie. It was a feast indeed.

Everyone helped in the kitchen. Grandma prepared the stuffing and turkey, Daddy did the squash and potatoes, Gigi made the gravy and I did most everything else. Of course, I did have a little helper in the kitchen. It thrills me to pieces that my daughter is getting old enough to take part in these traditions with me. She helped my mother set our dinner table, helped to shred and massage the kale and most importantly helped serve the pie. As we gathered around the table sharing the meal, we also shared our gratitudes.

In the weeks before Thanksgiving, we had been listening to the Martin and Sylvia Thanksgiving stories over on Sparkle Stories website. Our personal favorite is The Homegrown Thanksgiving. With that story in mind, we planned a meal that included as much local food as possible. Local squash, potatoes and garlic from our own garden, honey from our hive, tomatoes from Grandpa's garden, kale picked fresh from our garden that morning, local goat cheese, local butter; it all made for an expectational meal.

I did my best to spend that entire day being as mindful as possible and practicing each routine with extra gratitude. How lucky we are to be surround by family. We live in a beautiful city and are gifted with freedom. We have wonderful food to nourish our bodies with and comfortable beds to sleep in at night. We are healthy and happy. For all that and more, we are truly, truly thankful.

I'm sorry for the quality of the indoor photographs. My camera and I are struggling to find a way to capture what I see inside our home in the quality I would like. I hope to have less grainy photographs soon.