As I was reflecting back on the many amazing blessings in my life I realized that don’t let those around me know how much I truly appreciate them enough.  The idea of participating in a “thankfulness” challenge for the month of November was started a few months ago when I purchased cards for my family to send out for the Thanksgiving Holiday (see the picture of the front of the card below).

It is my wish to show my gratitude to the people I interact with day to day.  For the month of November I am planning a 30-30-30 Challenge.  It is my goal to say thanks in 30 ways to 30 people for 30 days.  Each day I plan to do at least one activity expressing my thanks to one person every day for thirty days.

Note: Thanksgiving week I had to group a couple items together into one day since we had a full schedule and we were seeing some of the people we want to thank on the same day.  Although in the list they will be separate.  Thanks!

Day 24

Who:  Mailman

We have lived in our house now for ten years and during those ten years we have had the same mailman.  His name is Sam, he has two black labs, and he only lives a few streets away from us.  How do we know all this information about our mailman you ask?  Well, first we try to make a point to talk with him whenever we see him and leave random gifts / notes of appreciation for him during special Holidays.  We figured out where he lived, quite by accident, when we were out going to garage sales one Saturday morning and happened to go to one at his house!  He stays busy delivering mail so the best way to show our thanks for all the mail he has delivered to our house is to stick a note of thanks and goodies directly in our mailbox for him to pick up when he drops off the mail that day.  We try to do something little around the Christmas Holidays for him as well.  It only takes a few moments to write a note of thanks and/or put something nice in the mail yet it brightens the day of the person who comes to our house almost every day to deliver our mail. 

Day 23

Who:  Mommy’s Helpers / Store Clerk

I didn’t really have anything that I had to have on Black Friday so I didn’t even venture out of the house until almost 11 am and even then I only went to a couple stores (mostly to the pharmacies to pick up health & beauty deals to re-stock our family with toothpaste and such).  One of the girls decided to go with me to one of the stores to help.  She pushed the cart through the store, helped me pick out the items, and was a good sport.  Now that it is the colder weather our lips tend to get  more chapped and one of the items that we picked up for free was chapstick (which my litter helper was really interested in what I was going to do with it).  After checking out and saying thank you to the store clerk (and asking her about her family) I gave my helper the free tube of chapstick.  She was soooo thrilled with that tube of chapstick it totally made her day!    Later at another store I had two helpers.  That store was offering a free candy bar so I had my two helpers pick out 1 candy bar that they could split, they picked out mint M&M’s to share.  Even the little stuff can mean a lot to people when we take the time to say thanks and show appreciation.

Day 22

Who:  Family

I have so much to be thankful for in my life.  Not only was it Thanksgiving it was also my birthday.  It was a perfect day of celebration and relaxation, just what I needed.  I spent the day having fun with my family.  The food was great, we played games, read books together, and had a blast.  Sometimes the best thing you can do to show appreciation to people is to spend quality time together which was my primary focus for today.  I did call, text, email, etc…..several other family and friends to wish them Happy Thanksgiving but otherwise the day was spent focusing on having fun with my family.