The “Thank You” Note

This past Christmas season, the five of us spent extended periods of time with family over the holidays. We got to see all sorts of our favorite people, including: parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins.

A few days after the dust settled and everyone was back in their own home (and home state), I received a thank you email from one of our house guests the previous week.

It wasn’t total surprise, she’s always been good about sending cards and thank you’s in the past, but this one was different.

In her email, she singled out each member of our family and told us what she liked/admired about that person or what she had the most fun doing with that person.

It was so sweet to see what qualities she noticed in our kids, qualities that I constantly overlooked due to being around them all the time. When she complimented our kids it felt like my wife and I were being complimented as well, not something parents get to hear too often.

Back to the email, after mentioning qualities about our kids, she went on to talk about my wife, and finally had kind words for me too.

It’s not something I would ever say I NEEDED to hear, but honestly it was so nice to see words written down just for me, being complimented by someone, especially as a stay-at-home parent. There are no work evaluations telling me how good I am at my job, and my kids aren’t likely to tell me they respect my decisions when it comes to them not eating junk food or staring at screens all day.

All that to say, the email made may day. I doubt it took her a long time to write it. It didn’t seem like a hard thing to do…at all. I started wondering why I didn’t write little emails like that to people. It’s simple and could really make a person’s day much better.

That’s also why I’m writing this today. I don’t want to necessarily call it a resolution, but in 2016, I’d like to be the person sending the emails making someone’s day, and I also encourage you to do the same.

Cheers and Happy 2016!

-Pete