It is so easy this time of year to make lists of things we are thankful for.
Our health, family, home, country...
Thankfulness at Thanksgiving come easily and in abundance, as it should.
Yesterday my littlest kid came into the house...my newly cleaned house mind you.
He was yelling for me to come look at something.
When I rounded the corner there he was smiling his huge two year old smile...
He was also covered from head to toe in mud.
He had left little tiny muddy boot tracks through the breezeway, past the laundry room, past the pantry, and into the middle of our family room. The doorknobs were covered with mud and there were a row of hand prints along the wall
There he stood grinning at me...
I would love to say that I knelt beside him and asked what he had made for me.
But I yelled something about not being in the house with muddy boots, scooped him up and took him outside all the while lecturing about clean floors and muddy footprints...
When I put him down on the back patio his smile was gone.
He was staring at his boots and telling me how sorry he was.
He looked at me with tears in his eyes and whispered that he had made something for me.
Ohhh little man what have I done?
I looked at those little eyes filled with tears and reached out to embrace the muddy mess that was my child. Of course I will come see what you have made for me...
We walked to where he had obviously been playing and there was a mud mountain covered with the last of the wildflowers from our field. It also had sticks and leaves and rocks adorning it...beautiful!
Me made mountain for you mama...pwetty mountain...BIG mountain. You wike it?
I love it baby, thank you.
You wike fwowers on it?
Yes they are just beautiful.
Me wuv you mama!
I love you to little man.
So I'm reminding my self with this post... I need to practice thankfulness today.
It is not about the food, it is not about the perfect house.
No it is about small things like mud mountains covered with flowers that are the things I need to remember to be thankful for.
Soon enough he will be grown up and gone...
And then I will very much miss those tiny little mud prints on my floor.
