One More Way to Share an Experience

This is a great time of year to encourage grandkids to enjoy the natural world.
Nature guides are one way to do this. Check at your local bookstore for the laminated, EZ-fold type of nature guide that fits into a pocket easily, and choose one that a grandchild might use to identify trees, birds, or flowers.
Or visit your local bird-supply store for a CD of birdsong that helps listeners identify which bird sings what.
Purchase one for yourself and one for your grandchild, then share the adventure.
If you live at a distance, send your grandchild one guide, keep one for yourself, then write an e-mail note or send a letter describing the trees you've identified, or the flowers you've found with your copy of the guide. Ask your grandchild to let you know what she's found, and how she uses her copy of the guide.
It's just one more way to share an experience and stay in touch, all at the same time.

Thank You!

Receiving a thank you note is always a pleasure, but sometimes you have to write them to get them!
Part of that equation is the power of setting a good example. When we write thank you notes regularly to our children and grandchildren, even for small things, we set a powerful example of everyday gratitude. It's important to say “thank you” in person, but a written note is tangible evidence of that gratitude. It allows us to express our thanks in a way that's usually more memorable, especially if we apply a little creativity to the way we write a thank-you note.
We can include a photograph or drawing, write a silly poem of thanks, or share a story of how much we appreciate the gift or kindness. A good thank you note is a model for our children and grandchildren to follow as they write their own thank you notes.
Which brings us to the second part of that thank-you note equation.
As a kid, I was a slacker about thank you notes. A cranky great aunt-by-marriage noticed this lack of etiquette on my part and complained loudly to my grandparents and parents. I felt terribly embarrassed until it occurred to me that she never ever wrote thank you notes herself for the gifts or kindnesses others extended to her. She only demanded thank you notes from others.
I never worried about thanking her in writing again.
This holiday season we'll have lots of opportunities to thank others for what they've given us, or what they've done for us. I want to remember to look for ways to say -- and write -- thank you in ways that are fun and creative. I want to let the people I love know I appreciate them and the effort they make.
I want to make them smile.

Beans and a Grateful Heart

Are you ready for Thanksgiving?
I'm not -- too much cleaning left to do, and once again I've overestimated either how quickly I clean or how much dust there is left over from the last time I dusted (which might have been longer than I thought . . . )
I've been thinking about how cleaning and shopping for turkey aren't all I need to do to get ready. I want to get my heart ready for Thanksgiving, too -- I want it to be filled with gratitude to God, because His blessings are abundant and because of His lovingkindness toward me and those I love.
So -- if you'd like to know more about Beans for Thanksgiving, and what they have to do with a grateful heart, please stop by the Hearts at Home website!

Looking Back, Looking Forward, Singing It All

What an amazing time we live in! It's not as if that's anything you've not noticed, I'm sure, but sometimes when I think about my own grandparents, born in the very earliest 1900s, and my grandchildren, born in the last years of the 1900s and the earliest years of the 2000s -- I'm amazed at the changes, the advances, the differences in what my grandparents experienced as children and what my grandchildren experience.
But Scripture tells us that from age to age, God does not change. And because of that, as the hymn says, I Stand Amazed.

As grandparents, we have a unique opportunity to share the best of what's gone before with our grandchildren, including the hymnody of our faith. That doesn't mean we can't sing those hymns in a way that fits the specific time we live in. Bart Millard has done that with two hymn collections, Hymned No. 1 and Hymned Again. If you like blues, country, soul, Southern rock -- you'll find a little bit of all those styles in these collections.
As hymns do, these look back, but they also look forward to the time when Jesus comes again: What a Day That Will Be!

A Card, A Note, A Gift from Grandma

I have a stack of Thanksgiving cards sitting on the kitchen counter, waiting for me to sit down and get them ready to mail.
I used to think Thanksgiving cards were a ploy by the card companies to get us to spend money, but one day I realized that, really, they are an opportunity to tell my kids and grandkids how thankful I am to have them in my life.
We always make a point of telling them that when they come to share Thanksgiving dinner with us, but sometimes not all of them can be here. And a card is something a child can tuck under a pillow or into a box of keepsakes; it's there to remind him that he's loved when we're not there. Sometimes all of us experience a time of loneliness, a time when silence seems to overcome our sense of belonging somewhere.
A card with a hand-written note that says “I love you and thank God for you” is a gift that speaks into the silence.
So, I'll make myself a cup of tea, and get those cards signed and ready to mail, and while I do that, I'll be thinking about each one of those precious people, thanking God for them.

Staying in Touch . . .

Here's a simple, quick idea for staying in touch with your grandkids over the summer: take five or ten business sized envelopes, address them to yourself, stamp them, then tie them with a pretty ribbon. Enclose them in a personal letter to your grandchild with a request for letters back over the summer.
You can enclose stationery with your stamped, self-addressed envelopes, or you can invite your grandchild to use her own stationery – whether that's on the back of a picture she's drawn or painted, or a note on the back of a program she's been to – encourage her to be creative in what she sends. If your grandchild can't quite write yet, ask for pictures she's drawn that tell what she's been doing over the summer.
By preparing and stamping the envelopes, you've taken a lot of the difficult work out of corresponding for your grandchild. To make envelope preparation even easier, use up some of those interesting return address stickers you get from various charities with your name and address on them.
One other thing you'll find helpful is to write letters to your grandchild, yourself. Our grandkids like to get mail, too! Be creative in the stationery you use, and generous in the things you write about. By setting that example (and by sharing your daily life with her in a letter) you'll encourage her to establish a letter-writing habit.
Enjoy a summer of mail with your grandkids!