Christmas of 2017 I was gifted a beautiful jar from my mom. Instructions on a card to follow were every time something positive, happy or flat out good happened we were to write it down stick it in the jar. It’s been 365 days since being gifted this jar, we’ve finished the first year of completing the “good things jar”. This new holiday tradition of reminiscing through old memories has been my favorite gifts ever. Especially with it being such a big year for us! Our daughters first birthday, moving, promotions, new jobs & all of our “firsts” as a family of three.
So, being that this was the first year the jar was completed this has become a family tradition to us now. To add onto writing down the good we read all of our notes back at the end of the year. We sat down on New Year’s Eve and went back and forth reading all the tiny folded up pieces of paper. Some made us laugh, like “Ella’s snaggle tooth, July” For those who don’t know instead of cutting her front two teeth my daughter cut her lateral incisor first, aka the one next to her front tooth. Needles to say it was hilarious looking and when I read it I could imagine perfectly her little snaggle tooth smile. 
After Tyler and I finished reading all of our good notes I folded them back up. I got out a ziploc bag labeled it 2018 and wrote our ages on the bag for that year. I the put it in my keepsake bin. 10 years from now we’ll smile even bigger reading “church for the first time as a family, January ” or “Ella’s first steps, August”. All these small precious moments life gives us deserve to be celebrated. Often times the small things that make us happy, like a lazy Sunday on the couch with the family or your mom dropping you off a coffee get forgotten with all the hustle and bustle going on in our heads. This was the perfect way to appreciate all the good 2018 had brought us.
The small and the big moments, they all added up. I highly recommend doing this tradition it is one my family holds dearly to our hearts. It was the perfect way to start the new year, looking back on all the good that had come to us and all we appreciated.
Jess Edmisten 