Truly Thankful

It seems to me that this year I have been thinking about the feeling of thankfulness more than past years. I find myself asking "Why"? Why does this Thanksgiving seem so much more important this year? It probably has something to do with Brianna being at that perfect and very impressionable age right now, I so want to teach her to be grateful for everything in life. A four year old's world can be so self-centered and selfish, we want her to be thankful for everything. We as a family have so much to be thankful for, God has blessed us with so many things, Tim has a great job and we have all we could ask for. But it's not really all about material things, is it? As I sit here, instead of being thankful for my 2 precious children and my wonderful husband, I realize that that I have been thinking about the fact that after having been asleep for only 2 hrs last night, I was awakened by a howling baby with a very leaky diaper. After correcting the problem he continued to cry for 1 hour, refusing to be consoled, finally going back to sleep at 2 am. 7 am: awakened by a sobbing little girl who's brand new princess sheets were now soaked, started laundry and started a new day very tired and more than a little cranky. Now of course these night are not typical, most of the time my children sleep 12 hr. nights, but of course the bad nights are the ones that stick out the most in our memories. This all was put into perspective on the way home from preschool this morning by a paper-grocery-bag-wearing little girl, dressed to be an Indian from the "Thanksgiving Feast" they had shared for snack time, complete with a feather headband she made " all by myself ". As I was asking her about her day and what she had learned I could feel myself starting to de-stress. All that had transpired this morning didn't really matter, that was just part of my job description as " Mommy ". What really mattered is the fact that I am blessed enough to have two precious children who get me up at night, blessed enough that I have a family that has clothes that need washed, blessed that I have a new washer and dryer to wash the laundry! Yes, from now on I'm going to do my best to focus on the good in everything and and remember that there is ALWAYS something to be thankful for!