What are YOU thankful for.

(I wrote this post last week, and got almost done when I lost my internet connection and most of what I wrote. I had lists of what my family what grateful for that I had written down. Now I can't find them, so this post is not what it was meant originally.)

I had to give the Young Women combined lesson this month. It just happened to land on the GRATITUDE lesson. What a perfect time of the year for that lesson. I based my lesson on the talk given by President Monson in the October conference on Gratitude. What a sweet message he gives. The lesson went amazing. I barely got into it and the time was gone, but I think the message that needed to be taken from it was. The spirit was very strong. The night before the lesson I wrote down as many things as I was grateful for that would fit on one paper. It was amazing how fast I filled that paper up. Then I had Shade, Shawn & Carter write as many things down that they could in 2 minutes. I put all of these in a BLESSING BASKET. At the first of my lesson I had each of the girls do the same, by the time we had put them all in the basket it was literally overflowing with blessings. That is what I wanted to portray to the girls; that their blessing basket is overflowing. For family home evening the next night, Shawn wanted me to give the lesson, so everyone wrote down what they were thankful for. I kept the lists so that I could write them down, which I did, then my post deleted and now I can't find the lists. Anyway, among the regular things like home, family, food, clothes; there were also things like dirt (Shade), nose hairs (Shawn), hair (Morgan), laughter (me), tractors (Carter).

For Thanksgiving we made a turkey with thankful feathers. Everyone was supposed to write one thing they were thankful for on a feather and we added it to the turkey. Here is a list of the things the Bob Boice family were thankful for. Neighbors, family, technology, friends, food, water home, fun family, the Gospel, clothes, teachers, snowboards, snow, school, food storage, warmth, temples, children, a warm home, sleep, mommy, money, turkeys, brothers & sisters, & animals. I will also add sunsets. As Shawn & I were driving home the other night as the blizzard was winding down, but still blowing quite hard we were driving East. The clouds were a beautiful pink and blue, and the mountains were shining with the new snow. As we looked behind us to the West the sun was setting and the sky was lit up in all different hues of orange and pink. Shawn's comment was, "How can anyone look at this, and doubt that there is a God?" I am so thankful for all that my Heavenly Father has given me. I only have to look around to know that he is real, and that he loves me enough to give me EVERTHING that I have. On Thanksgiving night as we were all sitting around the table visiting we again got to see one of his amazing sunsets.