The Sheriffs' Roundup: Happy Birthday!! (to my blog)

Yep...my blog is officially one year old today. And I know I haven't kept it up nearly enough...but I did the best that I could. It's been a fun way to look back at what the year has held for the Sheriff clan. Of course, a lot more has gone on than is recorded on these pages...the bad stuff has been noticeably overlooked...but we are fortunate. There really hasn't been too much bad stuff. In fact...our blessings of the last year look a little something like this:

and this...

and this little blessing couldn't be left out...

You see...this may look like a bunch of pieces of paper. But to our family, they are our blessings of 2009. We started a new tradition last year that I almost forgot to blog about. Anytime something happened to our family, big or small, we would write it down (usually on a that pad with the blue and green dots on it until we ran out of that paper). Then we would fold the paper up, and put it into this box:

a.k.a. The Blessings Box

Then on Thanksgiving, we sat down, dumped out the box, and read each blessing as a family. This gave us a year long look at how God has truly blessed us last year. It is so easy to forget and we get so caught up in our worries that we tend to forget the little things. It was so neat to look at all of the ways God answered and also did NOT answer some of our prayers in 2009, blessings that we never knew that we even needed at that time.

And so then the blessings papers were binded up, labeled "Blessings of 2009", and put in a special place. And now the new blessings have begun, and next Thanksgiving we will literally pour out God's blessings and look at them in a physical way as He pours them out on us all year long.

We actually didn't come up with this idea on our own...we stole it from a friend...but isn't it neat? We love doing it!

And now...for some priceless Christmas blessings in the form of pictures from 2009...

Payne and Daddy reading the Christmas story on Christmas Eve