R2BC - Blessings jar

This is definitely one of my favourite posts to write each week and it is probably one reason why I feel so cheerful on Thursdays nowadays as I look forward to thinking about my own reasons to be cheerful and seeing what everyone else has been up to.

I love the fact that mummy from the heart's linky is all about finding reasons to be cheerful no matter what you are going through - so even in difficult weeks, it gives us a chance to reflect and find positives.

1. Blessings Jar
I recently saw on a blog post about a blessings jar on 3 Children and IT (I LOVE that blog so do pop over and have a read if you haven't yet discovered it) and when I mentioned it to the kids, they were REALLY in favour of doing this idea. Basically the idea is that you just make a little note of things you are thankful for and pop it in the jar and at the end of the year you can look back and literally count your blessings.

Now firstly we didn't use a jar, we used a money box. The boys won this lovely money box from Laura Lee designs in a colouring competition and although it is rather Christmas themed with the cute robin, we couldn't bear to hide it away until next Christmas so it has made a fanstastic blessings box for us to post in our little slips of paper.

Secondly, the boys have enjoyed this idea so much that even though the blessings box has only been going for just over a week in our household, it was virtually full so we are going to be counting our blessings every week or so.

Here are some of the gems I found when we opened and read through the blessings that me and the kids have posted this week (Daddy got a big telling off as he had put NONE in there!!! In his defence, he claims he didn't actually know about it and we might have forgotten to tell him!). I have split them by handwriting to track back who posted them and it makes for lovely and funny reading...

J (age 8):

• The wii for 2012 Christmas,
• series 5 moshlings r out,
• moshi monsters limited edition sprocket with next issue of moshi mag,
• My first and second series 2 trashies bins
• Snow! Snowball fight!
• Switchy day 2011
• I completed robot wants puppy for the first time

D (age 6):

• We have anofe monny to go on holiday (theme parks too),
• that we do lots of comps and win things,
• snowball fight!,
• I love everyone! 
• that we got Trin.
• We had a wonderful xmas
• we are not poor like over humen in the wold.
• we made my dinosor. I love it!
• We grew up to be nice
• I'm food mania!

Mum:

• Panini's for lunch
• lovely work today by j & d

What I have learnt from all this is that mummy hasn't done a very good job of counting her blessings this week, I need to add a few words to D's spelling list this week, J is rather focused on all things moshi / trashies / computers etc (so what's new!). And has a very good memory to be writing down things that happened in 2011 as his blessings.

I was also interested by D's comment about the holiday and theme park as I have no knowledge of this!!! and there are also times that I would definitely question his statement that "we grew up to be nice". Loved his food mania one too (which is very true although I think he meant to say maniac).

2. Home-ed bowling
Today we ventured out to meet up with the bigger local home-ed group (i.e. not the smaller ASD group) which we last did something with nearly two years ago. There always seemed to be reasons not to go along to things because at first (with my 'making sure we did home school properly mindset') I wanted them to mainly do school work stuff rather than social stuff, then I was pregnant with T and tired all the time, then T was newborn and there wasn't time to get out and about and fit in breastfeeding sensibly into that, and all along I worry about how J would cope in a bigger group.

But today I was so glad we went along. We were made to feel so welcome and the boys had a great time. I then treated the boys (and me) to mcdonalds drive thru, so it was a lovely day out.

3. Pizza, chocolate and Granny
Daddy was working late again this week and so Granny was amazing at helping out with the dreaded drama run in the evening where both boys drama class times clash and one is one side of one town and the other is the other side of another town and it is actually impossible for 1 person to do the drop off and pick ups.

Granny had also managed to get D to bed (and asleep!) by the time me and J got home.

Daddy arrived home just a few minutes ago with left over pizza!

Earlier in the day me and the boys had polished off these chocolates.

In all honesty eating mcdonalds, pizza and chocolates should not be reasons to be cheerful but today they were.

Goodness me what a long blog post this has become so I really must be cheerful today! What are your reasons to be cheerful?