I spent last night surrounded by close friends, sharing a glass of wine and a meal.  Together we celebrated the myriad of gifts we often take for granted.  Taking time out of our busy lives to remember all that we are thankful for is an important endeavor, if an oft overlooked one.  While the Christmas season is a wonderfully joyous time when the best in humanity can be seen around many corners, there is no denying that it is also a season of consumerism.  What do you want for Christmas?  I have to get my shopping finished.  So why should we be in a rush to get there?  Why can’t we spend a little more time on Thanksgiving, a holiday about celebrating what we have, not about getting more stuff?

For the rest of this Thanksgiving week, I, for one, will be ruminating on the many gifts in my life.  And I’ll be leaving the twinkling lights, red ribbons and golden baubles in the drawer for another week.

Required Tools: hammer, roofing nails, measuring tape, utility knife, chalk line

This weekend was spent working on someone else’s house, through Habitat for Humanity of Dane County, WI.   Two homes, the last of over fifty sites developed by Habitat in the Twin Oaks subdivision.  It was amazing. 

Click the photos to see homeowner profiles on Habitat's webpage

Saturday morning broke clear and cool.  The Fourth Presbyterian Young Adults construction team met at the staging site bright and early at 8am.  Arlie, the Habitat Foreman, described the work ahead of us for the day: we would break into three teams to complete tasks on two neighboring homes – roofing, siding and landscaping.  Fearless as I am, I volunteered for a roofing crew.

The two homes were of the same design: single story, two bedrooms with a nice front porch.  Our task was to shingle the roof on the front porch, which was about seven feet wide.  Nailing down the shingles turned out to be pretty easy work, but the narrow width of the roof meant a lot of cutting.  And when there is only one utility knife…

Perhaps the most moving part of the day came when the future owners of the two homes and a third future owner from another part of the subdivision – three single mothers – asked me to take their photograph in front of the houses.  As they were posing themselves, they traded dreams about the day when they would look at that photo and remember the fun they had building their homes.

I have spent a lot of time renovating and building homes in my life, from gutting bathrooms, tearing down cracked plaster and upgrading electrical to tiling floors, hanging cedar shakes and painting, and I don’t think there is any activity that breeds pride in your home quite like taking part in building it.