Teaching Thankfulness

On November 1, Tate declared that he wished we could skip Thanksgiving because it was a boring holiday; we should just have Halloween then Christmas! I tried to play up Thanksgiving by explaining that we get to visit family, eat yummy food and talk about things we are thankful for. I even drove by a house that has at least 4 giant blow-up turkeys in their yard and said, "see, they love Thanksgiving!" He wasn't really convinced. Maybe because the same house has giant blow-up displays for every holiday.
It came as no surprise because Christmas has always been his favorite holiday. He loves the lights, decorations and music. Tate listens to music every night at bedtime and he chose to listen to Christmas music for an entire year. That's right, Christmas music for 365+ nights! Michael and I nearly went CraZY! So last year after epiphany, our Elf on the Shelf returned and left a note saying he took all of the Christmas music off of Tate's mp3 player. He would bring it back with him when he returned for Christmas this year (2012).

I knew there was a better way to teach him about Thanksgiving or at least to be thankful, but it is really hard when stores are putting up their Christmas displays even before Halloween! We checked out some books at the library, though he wasn't very interested. Later that day, I noticed a bunch of thankful/ gratitude posts my Facebook friends had been posting in their statuses. I decided I would try the same thing with Tate, tell him something I was thankful for every day during the month of November. Every night I try to ask him what his favorite part of the day had been, so I could easily incorporate that into our conversation.
We are halfway through the month and he has a hard time coming up with something new each day without some help. Sometimes I ask him several times during the day, just to keep him thinking about it. Here's what he has told me so far:
1- Mimi (ironically, the same thing I was thankful for.)
2- Mimi (Then we had a conversation that went something like this- Me: can't you think of something else since you were thankful for her yesterday? Tate: But I'm thankful for Mimi every day! Me: Me too, but I'm also thankful for other things... you, Daddy, Mayer, Papa, everyone in our family... Today, I am also thankful for nice weather on my morning run and for good music to listen to. Can you think of anything else you might be thankful for? Tate: *sigh* I guess Mommy or Papa. Me: Thank you!)  
3- Grandma
4- Grandma and Pa buying him presents
5- Mimi and Papa coming home (from vacation)
6- Daddy staying home all day
7- Going to back Mimi's house
8- I don't remember what it was or if I even asked him. In my defense, I had a rather crazy night. This is what I did to our dinner:

Black beans that basically turned into charcoal on the stove. The house smelled like smoke and what I remember my Gram's ashtray smelling like.

9- Mommy because I love you every day! (*heart melts*)
10- Drew, Lily and Julianna (his cousins)
11- Daddy coming home from hunting.
12- Miss Shanna (his teacher)

13- Mommy (first he said "nothing." It took some prodding to get an answer.)
14- My school... it is so fun!
I hope I have found a new tradition for our family! I need to record this year's thankfuls so we can re-read them from time to time. Next year we will include Michael and Mayer too, not just Mommy and Tate. It will be a good nightly dinner topic. In fact, we should do it every night and not just in the month of November!