While we’re looking forward to Christmastime, we don’t want to overlook another very special holiday season—Thanksgiving! Here at TOS we’re so thankful for all that the Lord has blessed us with this year, both physically and spiritually. In the spirit of thanks, we invited some friends to share some of their special Thanksgiving traditions with you.

When our kids were small, they were in the way of our Thanksgiving food preparations. I hated to shoo them away, because I didn't want them to associate Thanksgiving with being excluded.

After I had to spend a week in the hospital, however, the hospital’s daily menu gave me an idea. Seeing my kids grab on to the idea of creating menus, I had each of them make a Thanksgiving menu poster. They copied down the list of foods I gave them and then decorated the outside borders using stencils to draw leaves or by doing leaf rubbings, which they cut out and pasted around the menu. My kids love art, and this was a big hit.

We later added the tradition of filling a decorative container with pieces of paper on which our kids wrote things they were thankful for. After dinner, we took turns drawing cards and reading them. My kids got carried away and put in scores of folded papers. They enjoyed it, though, and in our rich country, it is good for kids to really think about just how much they have to be thankful for.

We are so thankful for our dream come true, a house in the countryside on one acre, with a wide-open field out front, Little House style, and 200 trees, including fruit trees. (See photos at lighthome.net/rgg/kj/New_Home_Photos.html.) God took a forced move and worked it out for our good. With 115-degree summer weather, we are most thankful this year for good shade, an 18-foot swimming pool that our neighbors gave us in exchange for our labor and hauling, and an abundant peach harvest. Out of hard times, God has given us great good.

You can see some photos of the decorated table from our most recent Thanksgiving dinner online at lighthome.net/htm/thanksgiving_photos.html, along with our daughter’s decorated Thanksgiving menu (created at age 12) at lighthome.net/fdm/fall/01/thanksgiving_menus.html. Leaf rubbings and other nature crafts are featured in our delightful penmanship book, A Walk in the Woods. You can download free sample pages at lighthome.net/lh/walkinwoods.html. Several of those same craft ideas are on our website in color at lighthome.net/htm/boyscrafts.html.

Just right for Thanksgiving, we share ideas for Colonial family life activities, a fi ve-course menu and recipes, notes on what life was like in Colonial times, paper dolls, support group activities, photos of kids in Colonial costume, plus instructions for making a handkerchief doll, all in our cursive penmanship book, Family Life in Colonial Times. (See lighthome.net/lh/colonialtimes.html for details.) Download free sample pages from our 14 different very creative penmanship books for all ages.