Day 12: Tradition

 

I am thankful for our family tradition of restaurant food on Friday nights. It's a nice way to give parents a break and give everyone a treat all at once. It's a fun way to start the weekend and it gives one less thing to think about as you wrap up the work week. And for most of the life of this tradition (which we've held for several years), it's been a good way for our family to get some quality family time, although the way it has worked out this past year has been a little different. Due to sports schedules, the restaurant food has been a standing order of pizza and chicken tenders, picked up at 3:30 from Pizza Plus so that everyone can have at least a little dinner before heading back out. The sports schedule recently changed to give us back our Friday evenings, so I'm grateful that we'll be able to go back to a more normal eating time, get a little variety in the restaurant food, and eat together as a family.

Day 11: Season

 

I am grateful for summer in this stage of life because it provides rest and a break on the same every day routine.

It's restful because we take a break from homeschool for a couple months. The kids and I both appreciate the slower mornings, the absence of workbooks, and the freedom that opens up to do other things or to do nothing at all. 

It breaks up same every day because of all the unique-to-summer events that happen. VBS, day camps (and new this year, one kid going to overnight camp), Art Town, vacations. As well as the seasonal things that we've always loved - pulling out the kayak and paddleboard for lake days; going to the pool; watermelon and corn on the cob at summer barbecues. And the always fun, likely bigger and better than ever celebrating 250, 4th of July. Cheers to summer!

Day 10: Sounds

 

                    Quote from "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis

When I saw this prompt, my first thought was that I am grateful for the sound of water. And then before I got the chance to sit down and write a post, I read this section of "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" to my kids which describes the sound of water so perfectly. And what makes it even more beautiful is what it is symbolizing here - winter is melting into spring as the deeper magic is coming into Narnia in anticipation of all things being renewed. I am grateful for the sight, sound, feeling, taste, and smell of water, and I'm grateful for this remarkable story.

Day 9: Role Model

 I'm going to choose a fictional role model this year and say that I'm thankful for Albus Dumbledore from Harry Potter. I'm grateful for the characteristics he embodies as a leader and as a person. More on the leader level, I'm impressed by his skill at his profession (magic / wizarding); his ability to come up with creative and surprisingly effective solutions to thorny problems; and his wisdom, patience, and ability to stay cool when things around him are going crazy. More on the human level, I'm impressed by his self sacrificing nature, his ability to maintain a sense of humor and perspective through everything, and his deep kindness.

I'm grateful for fiction writers who create such a rich world as Harry Potter, with characters you get to know like friends, and who create characters that you can root for and against and even aspire to want to be like. 

Day 8: Knowledge

 

I am grateful for the knowledge I learn every time my son develops a new area of interest. Josh develops pretty intense interests in things and then those are his favorite things to talk about, so I'm going to take a little walk down memory lane of the different interest areas over the years. None of these have completely gone away, but they fade after a few years when a new topic captures his imagination.

 In preschool, it was trains, so we knew all the characters on Thomas, but we also knew the difference between a boxcar, hopper, and gondola.

In early elementary, the interest was bridges. We learned about the different kinds - arch bridge, suspension bridge, cable-stayed bridge, etc. We learned about the longest and the strongest and the most unusual bridges throughout the world. Two favorites were the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and the memorable Gallupin Gertie in Tacoma, Washington.

In late elementary through middle school, it was natural disasters. We learned about the different wind speed classifications for hurricanes and tornadoes, about what causes natural disasters to form, and most of all what were the biggest and most notable disasters in history - everything from Vesuvius to Mt. St. Helens with volcanoes, Hurricane Katrina, the Tri-State Tornado. We still take note of every tsunami sign we see when we're on the coast and keep track of wildfires pretty closely.

Now, the beloved subject is shipwrecks. Titanic and Lusitania are the two that he can tell you about backwards and forwards, but he likes to learn about more obscure ones, about ship captains who acted honorably and dishonorably, and about how lifeboat regulations have changed over time.

These are all subjects I knew very little about before Josh, and they are subjects that make me think of him with a smile every time they come up in even the smallest way in every part of life. I'm grateful for the passion he brings to his interests and how that overflows to all of us.

Day 7: Changes this Year

 

This one is an anticipated change that's coming up in August. After four years of homeschooling, Zoey is going back to public school to start high school. In honor of this, I'm going to do a thankful about some of the things I loved about high school.

I'm grateful for teachers and academic opportunities. Like McQueen, my high school was one of the biggest in the state. This meant that we had quite a range of classes to choose from and sometimes got really great teachers. In particular, I loved my high school English teachers and credit them for helping me learn to get technically skilled as a reader and writer while not taking away the joy and fun of either pursuit. I had an Anatomy and Physiology teacher who had us eat all kind of strange animal body parts and try to earn the "Iron Stomach Award" as we learned about the different body systems. I had social studies teachers who showed me that history can be the most exciting and relevant subject rather than the driest. I hope Zoey has some teachers who inspire.

I'm grateful for the events, like Spring Day and football games and pep rallies and the dances and the graduation ceremony. I wasn't especially into any of these things at the time, but looking back, they are special marker posts during your teen years and though they weren't the highlight of the experience for me, I'm grateful and glad they were there. I hope Zoey enjoys some of the traditional high school events.

I'm grateful for the sports and coaches. It's so helpful in high school when you find your thing, and for me this was definitely sports. On my teams, I found friendships, learned many life lessons (scattered throughout previous blog posts), and made some great memories. I got to experience both victory and defeat as intense as anything I've faced in adult life, and I found a place of belonging. I hope that Zoey is able to find an activity that excites her and gives her a place of belonging.

Most of all, I'm grateful for high school friendships. I wasn't a popular kid, but I had really great, strong, real friendships. None of us were inclined to party, so our weekends looked more like spending an hour at Blockbuster picking out a movie, driving around for hours, listening to music - and it was the absolute best. I loved my high school friends and definitely count them as the highlight of my high school experience, and I hope that Zoey makes friendships like these.

Day 6: Character Trait

The character trait I'm grateful for today is one that I've had to grow more than one that comes naturally, and that is adaptability. I tend to have an idea, once I start down a path, of how life is going to look both day-to-day and also 5, 10, and 15 years out with following that path. The thing I've had to learn about life is that it doesn't work so predictably as to be planned out neatly for decades into the future. There will be surprises, curve balls, and challenges that force you to pivot. There will be things about both you and your family members that make what seemed like the best life path turn out to not be so anymore as time goes on. 

•  Vocation-wise: I've learned how to be a stay-at-home mom and a homeschool mom for a good chunk of my adult life when I never in a million years would have envisioned that life for myself; and now, over the last couple years, am learning how to transition back into the workforce after so many years away. 
• For everyone who raises kids: you see that the only predictable thing is change over time. Just when you get the hang of one stage, they are on to the next, and each stage comes with increasing independence and a need to trust the kids more rather than try to control everything. 
•  In my line of work, the cases are extremely dynamic, so it very frequently happens that you have conversations and do research and make plans based on one set of facts and then things have already changed by the time it gets to the decision making deadline. Everyone in this work world has to learn how to plan and move forward with plans, but stay adaptable for changes at any time.

All of this has been stretching and growing and teaching that me how to re-invent, how to be a beginner in middle age, and how to adapt to what life demands of you at different times. I'm grateful for that lesson, which I think I have grown in but which will also continue to be a lifelong learning project. 

Day 5: Day-to-Day Bore

One of my regular trails

I can't let a gratitude series go by without writing at least one post about my gratitude for running, and this works as the category to slot it in because this gets to an aspect of running that I appreciate - it's the same thing, over and over. I will occasionally try a new trail or get out for a run on vacation or see a new route via a race, but generally I do the same 3-4 routes every single time I run. This familiarity allows you to notice things - the changing seasons, the people who do really creative and beautiful things with their yard, the little tucked away green space that's not officially a park. You get to know the landmarks that you pass each time and gauge how the run is going based on how you feel when you hit that point in the route.  It allows you to zone out of the activity itself and either work through things in your mind or attend fully to music. It makes it very easy to get out the door when you're just grabbing your shoes and heading to the same few places - no time or energy used up in planning. And it's comforting, when you're going through stressful and chaotic things in work and in life, that running can be a space that is not stressful or chaotic. I'm grateful for the day-to-day bore of running.

Day 4: Talents

 

This is not a unique talent, judging by the number of memes available on the subject, but I am grateful for my talent of memorizing song lyrics. (My unique twist is that I can hear a lyric in a close-but-wrong way and then maintain that as the correct lyric in my head even if I hear the song with the correct lyric 500 more times.) I'm grateful for the joy that music brings and I'm grateful for the way that singing a song you loved when you were 11 or 16 or 25 brings you right back to that time in life. I'm grateful for the songwriters who come up with just the right words to capture a feeling or moment, and I'm grateful for the musicians who add the music that elevates the whole experience to another level. 

Day 3: Invention

 I am grateful for the invention of dishwashers. There are many chores that I enjoy if I'm in the right mood and have a good audiobook playing, but handwashing dishes is never on that list. I'm grateful that dishwashers allow you to avoid the level of rinsing and scrubbing, the dealing with really hot water, the wondering if you got it clean enough with glasses, the trying to dry in the weird nooks and crannies, and the finding drying space on the counter for a meal's worth of dishes. And I'm grateful that because dishwashers are common in primary homes now, the one thing that's fun about handwashing is the signal to the brain that if you're handwashing, it's probably because you're somewhere new and different and hopefully on vacation. Here's to you, dishwashers!

Day 2: Part of the Day

 

Since I do a series like this every year, I like to try to choose things that are true of our family for a stretch of time, but likely won't be true forever. One of the things that we like to do a couple times per week right now is play Settlers of Catan. 

I'm grateful that the kids are old enough to play games and watch movies that all of us can genuinely enjoy. I'm grateful for this game, which has just the right amount of complexity and length of gameplay to be maximally enjoyable. I'm grateful for how it brings out the girls' personalities, showing their increasing abilities to strategize, negotiate, and adapt. I'm grateful for the Longest Road card and getting a killer 2 for 1. Most of all, I'm grateful for the time together.

Gratitude Series 2026: Food

We are hitting our homeschool summer break, and with that, I'm going to start up another round of summer gratitudes on the blog. As always, my mind could use a reset towards thankfulness, and working through these lists is a helpful way to do it. I plan to post a few of these per week through the summer, and invite any of you who enjoy gratitude lists to join me!

Day 1 is "What Kind of Food are You Grateful For?"

While I'm very grateful for the simple food that constitutes the vast, vast majority of life, at this moment I'm feeling most grateful for the kind of food you get to eat at a fancy restaurant. I'm grateful for how you often get to eat in courses, with an appetizer, a salad, a main course, and dessert - instead of cramming everything onto one plate and eating through it like a race before getting on to the next thing on the schedule, you get to savor the food, the company, and the whole experience. I appreciate how nice restaurants care about the aesthetics of the food, presenting things beautifully and sometimes even artfully. I appreciate how they attend to the texture and the smell as well as the taste. I appreciate how they are so inventive, coming up with spice and flavor combinations that you've never seen before. I appreciate how they can take a classic food that you've eaten a hundred times and prepare it better than you've ever had it before. I appreciate how the restaurants strive to make the whole experience pleasurable, with hospitable service and nice decorations or views. I am grateful how this commonest of activities, this thing we need to do multiple times per day every day to sustain life, can also be turned into such a grand, pleasurable, celebratory event.