On the 1st Day of Giving...

Welcome to the 1st Day of Christmas Giving!

In all fairness, we actually did this yesterday and scrapbooked it today. We went to Dollar Tree and sitting outside in the cold, rainy weather was a woman with two children who were huddled under a blanket. They had a made a few pies and were trying to sell them to raise money for a single mother that they know.

Having done bake sales before, and knowing how crushing it is when no one wants to buy anything, I'm now a certified sucker for any bake sale that I come across. This was a tiny little one, and honestly, it looked horrible. I completely judged the lady at first. (I'm very ashamed of it). She was chain smoking, had make-up smudged all over face, and was missing her front teeth. My immediate reaction was that there was no way I was going to eat anything from that bake sale.

My next reaction was that no one else would buy anything either, and that broke my heart.

So, we forked over $2.00 for a sack of four mini muffins and gave her an extra dollar that I had in my pocket.

Well, we got to talking and the lady was the nicest lady. Oh my word. She also has a grandson who has autism. And she knew everything about autism. I mean, everything. All the treatments, you name it. She was super educated on it. It blew me away. And I felt so terrible for judging her. What was I thinking??

Hmmm... you think maybe God intended for the real lesson of the day to be aimed at me and not the kids??

So, I got the kids in the car, and before I could think about what I was doing, I went back up and gave her a $20 bill. It actually came out of our grocery money for the week (along with the $3 I paid for the cupcakes and $21 I spent in Dollar Tree buying scrapbook supplies. Sorry, Simeon!). Which has left us with $36 for groceries for this week. Ouch.

But you know what? $36 for a week of food may not sound like a lot, but it's so more much than the majority of the world has, isn't it? I can't really complain. And Sim made a delicious breakfast this morning out of milk, cabbage, eggs, and pepper (all fried up). Delicious and very cheap.

We are really blessed.

Anyway, the kids woke up this morning and Eli said, "You know what today is? It's the first day of Giving!" And Nandi said, "Yeah, we helped that lady!", so it was really nice knowing that it made a little impression on them.

Then we made a scrapbook page to remember it. Okay, my disclaimer is that I'm not a scrapbooker, don't have any scrapbook supplies, and couldn't even tell you what acid-free paper is all about. So, I just bought some wrapping paper at Dollar Tree, some Christmas cards, gift tags, stickers, and gift card holders and that's what I'll be using this year.

The $20 above was scanned on our printer (oops, didn't know that was illegal until Sim pointed it out.), and the reindeer holder is actually a gift card holder. The border is a border on some wrapping paper that I printed out. And voila! A super cheap scrapbook page to kick off the 12 Days of Giving.

Stay tuned for tomorrow to see what happens next...

P.S. Please don't think that our family is some really giving, super amazing family with perfect kids. (Okay, did those of you who know us just burst into laughter just then??) Look, we still do Santa and, in fact, the kids have been counting down Santa since last Christmas. As for me... just walking into Target this time of year gives me the super-wants. And Sim? Well, Sim truly is actually a saint. He could live in the wilderness with a backpack and a walking stick and never be happier. The point is... we're trying. That's all. We're just trying and hoping and praying that it soaks in and the kids grow wanting to help others. And sometimes we want to beat our heads against the wall - like this morning when our middle child raged for 2 1/2 hours - but we keep truckin' along.

I just wanted to point that out b/c I didn't want anyone to think that I think that everyone else thinks that I think (boy, that's a lot of thinking!) that we're just so incredibly awesome and perfect and never make mistakes and my kids freely give their spending money to buy shoes for orphans and would rather visit a national park instead of Disney World. Haaah! Are you kidding? If that was the case, we wouldn't need to be actively pursuing 12 Days of Giving, would we? It'd be something that we just did normally.

But, having said that, I have to give a big shout-out to three kids who truly are self-sacrificing: Emily, Laurel, and Abby Holt. They've given up their Christmas presents this year in order to have the money that'd be spent on presents go towards buying a trampoline for the kids at Sarah's Covenant Homes.

Now, THAT, is truly wonderful.

Merry Christmas, Holt kids.