A 'Tude' Change and a Fun Project

Guys - I have had a rough couple of days.  I hate having rough days.  Not only are they hard for me, but they are hard for my kids and hubby.  It needed to end.  

I was close to tears all day (and that was even after having a breakdown last night).  What I realized I needed to do was do something fun with my kids, but what?  Usually in this situation, Russell and I bake cookies.  That always makes both of us happy.  Coming off of Halloween weekend and going into the season of eating, I didn't think this was the best idea.  Especially for my losing-baby-weight efforts.  

Instead, I decided to change my grumpy-and-exhausted-mommy-tude into gratitude.  

What a lovely morning it ended up being!

I looked up printable turkey feathers online so that Russell and I could write what we were grateful for on feathers and tape them onto the wall (Russell loves tape).  Fun activity for Russell, attitude changer for me.  Win-win.  The website I found the turkey feathers also had a turkey head and feet so you could make a whole turkey.  Russell was so excited - and kept asking me to make turkey noises.  Gobble!

Here is the beginnings of our turkey . . . and Russell, Hannah and Puppy:

Russell and I started writing things were are grateful for on the turkey feathers.  This ended up being a fantastic lesson about gratitude for Russell and he caught on really quickly.  I was back to my almost-in-tears state when he said he was grateful for mommy.  Tender mercy and adorable moment right there! 

He also helped me come up with things that Hannah might be grateful for.

(Don't worry! Hannah was supervised while holding the scissors the ENTIRE time.)

I ended up cutting out about 100 feathers and put them in this festive basket by our turkey project.  This way, whenever we think of something we are grateful for, it will be easy to pop a feather up on the wall!  I'm so excited to see what else is added to fatten our turkey up!

It is amazing how gratitude can change a negative 'tude.'  I'm grateful that I thought of this fun activity for today and for how much Russell loved it too.  The day still isn't perfect, but there was a bright spot in it that will continue to provide bright spots the rest of the month.  I'll have to post of picture of our efforts when we are done!