Random Acts of Thanks: The End

Despite my silence, the end of November was packed full for our family, including three Thanksgivings and a parade, as well as the many ways we chose to show our gratitude throughout our community.

Though our family spends a large majority of time throughout the year performing acts of service throughout our community, I enjoyed taking some time to focus in on how being kind and sharing what we have makes us feel and how it changes how others feel.

So, despite not fitting in 30 acts, we landed in December feeling pretty good. Here's what we did accomplish:

Donated:

• Holiday decorations for tornado victims who lost theirs back in April.
• Turkeys to local food bank to help with the holiday meal.
• Two winter coats (which the kids handed over themselves).
• Candy to local rehab center, which the kids selected from their Halloween haul.
  
  

  

  Sorting through the candy

  
  
• Mittens and hats for a winter-weather collection drive.
  
  

  

  These items were given to local foster children.

Volunteered to:

• Help serve Thanksgiving dinner for 50+ needy families.
• Host a big fundraiser for my sister's kidney transplant fund.
• Babysit a friend's little girl when daycare fell through.
• Take my sister to a day of doctor appointments.
• Take dinner to my mom at her work.
  
  

  

  Special meal for Grandma (bought at a
  fundraiser for Javi's school's PTO.

  
  
• Help paint a local community building.
  
  

  

  The kids loved helping paint this building, even though
  they weren't allowed up on the ladders.

Paid to:

• Purchase Christmas gifts for a child at a group home in our area.
  
  

  

  Javi and Bella helped pick out these gifts for a teen at a local
  group home. They also helped wrap/bag the gifts.

  
  
• Provide three 6 families with meals (via Feeding America).
  
  

  

  Javi and his cousin bringing in boxes to give out.

  
  

  

  She didn't like "strangers" trying to move her box.

  
  
• Provide food for Thanksgiving dinner for 50+ families.
• Send a round of ice cream to a family dining in the same restaurant as us.

Miscellaneous:

• Sent 20 holiday cards to a local retirement community.
  
  

  

  Too distracted getting them done to take "after" photos.

  
  
• Showed up at Javi's school with a tray of cookies for him to share with other students.
• Sent in donuts for Bella to give to her preschool teachers.
• Sent in school supply goodie bags for each child's teachers.

All in all, my kiddos learned to think about others more and began going out of their way to be kind and helpful wherever they could.

The best part is our little project has already carried over into December. Bella has asked if we can serve Christmas dinner somewhere, too, and Javi volunteered to "work" at the craft station of our recent community gingerbread houses event rather than build a house himself.

Needless to say, they make me proud. And exhausted. I'm so glad to have this post finished! Now I can go back to regular random postings. :)

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Random Acts of Thanks: 6-9

Guess what. Sometimes we make really big plans and then life happens. For me, this week, life looked like a surprise 730 pages of editing plus two a slew of deadlines ... so our Random Acts of Thanks felt smaller, though I know they are still important.

I hope we'll be able to make more sweeping gestures as the month wears on.

#6. Voting.

Normally, I wouldn't consider voting an act of thanks, but this year our town had a dismal turnout. Only 7% of registered voters actually showed up at the polls -- and that's including our early voting period. When I cast my vote at 4pm, I was voter #125 at my polling place. How disappointing is that?

Every year the Mountain Man and I make it a point to take our children with us when we vote. We want them to feel involved in the political process, and we want them to understand how important it is that everyone casts their vote.

I make sure to discuss with them how women and people of color had to fight hard to gain the right of voting and that by casting our vote, we are honoring their heroism. Therefore, this year, I'm including it. We are thankful and we showed it by showing up.

#7. Gaboons!

Our buddy J has a love that matches his love of Fancy and that love is gaboons (!!!), known to everyone else as balloons. Ashley asked me if we could all vote together so we could help her with him when she went in to cast her vote.

The kids and I decided to surprise our little friend with a big bouquet of gaboons. We bought 8 mylar ones in all different prints, shoved them into the car, and drove to meet them. According to Ashley, J lost his mind as soon as we turned the corner and he laid eyes on our car. "Gaboons! Mine! My gaboons!" with lots of clapping and laughing.

I wish we could've heard him. Instead, what we saw was him charging across the parking lot at us as soon as Ashley let go of his hand. He flew over to us with a look of intense concentration. When he got to us, he didn't say hello or give us high fives. He said only, "No let go gaboons!" and made sure he clasped the string for every last one. He didn't care that they said "Get well" and "Happy birthday" and "It's a girl," he only cared that they didn't get away from him.

After he'd had some time with his gaboons, J did something that amazed us all. He gave each of us one balloon to have for our very own -- something he's never done in his life.  Talk about paying it forward!

#8. Fancy hunting.

Our next act involves J, too. Our plan had been to vote and then return home to make dinner and go about our usual weekday routine. However, J really didn't want to leave us. This kid has such a huge heart and our family takes up a lot of space in it. While he's older than Javi, he really sees Bella as his best friend and Javi as his role model.

Therefore, we couldn't let him down. We decided to forego our regular plans and have Ashley and J over for dinner and some play time. But really the only thing J wanted was to find and chase Fancy (poor girl). So, once we got home, he and Bella raced to the backyard for the ultimate game of hide and seek.

J finally spotted Fancy roosting in her "bedroom," aka a nearly bare tree in the corner of our yard. He squawked and flapped at her hoping to get her to run so he could chase her. When she ignored him, he turned his gaboon into a weapon and used to rile her up enough that she rushed off to find a safer roosting spot.

No bird has ever made a child as happy as Fancy did J at that moment!

#9. A note for no reason.

A family friend recently moved from our area to southern California. While technology like Facebook allow us to be engaged in her life, we decided to send her a little piece of NC, especially now that we're having a really beautiful fall.

So we drove around one afternoon looking for perfect locations for a fall photo shoot. Then I added some text to the photo and the kids wrong a little message on the back and we mailed it out. I hope our friend loves her little photo of "home."

***I'll check back in next Sunday to share the week's random acts of thanks. If you're doing something similar, please share your link in the comments so we can learn from you and get ideas. We're already planning a shoe box, sending special things to Romania and to soldiers in combat zones, donating to a mitten tree, and making cards for nursing home residents. We're in need of more small ideas, please!***

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Random Acts of Thanks

The kids and I have jumped aboard the "give thanks" bandwagon, but we're doing things slightly different (because I can never let things just be easy).

Rather than say why we're thankful, we have decided to use this month to show our gratitude by giving back to our community. We'll perform a "random act of thanks" for each of the 30 days of November. I know it sounds a little high-minded, but by "our community," I really mean the people and organizations in our lives that have influenced and enhanced us.

Our giving back will happen in big ways, but also in small ways. And to keep us accountable, I'm (of course) going to share our "random acts of thanks" here each Sunday evening. Some weeks will have more acts than others because we're more cluster people than deliberate once-a-day people.

And so. Random acts of thanks for this week are:

#1. Holding the door for people at the post office.

When the kids and I talked about what it meant to show our gratitude by doing things for others, they couldn't quite grasp the concept of small things. They talked about the things they've done before (work at a soup kitchen, fill shoe boxes to send to third world countries, run a food drive for our local food pantry, etc). We had to have a much longer talk about how we can show our gratitude in little ways.

Bella's absolute favorite suggestion was holding the door for people and she is awesome at it. The only place we went this week where there were other people was the post office. Bella shot out from the pack of people all hurriedly, head down rushing toward the doors. After she hoisted the door open, she flattened herself against it and smiled at each and every person who passed through.

Strangely, many people didn't like her holding the door for them and had to be coaxed to enter the building. That's where Javi stepped in. If a person hesitated he would say, "That's my sister. She's being grateful by helping you. You should just thank her and go inside." (Yes, I have amazing children.)

Sadly I had neither phone nor camera with me to capture this goodness.

#2. Surprise childcare for an overwhelmed friend.

I had a training session on Saturday afternoon and was still really out of sorts; however, I didn't realize it until I said something snippy about the kids (several children were there, mine weren't). Then later in the session I overheard a friend say to someone else how crazy the past week had been with her husband being gone often, her job being generally stressful (she's a school administrator), and her son being a typical two year old.

And so when I got home, I mentioned to the kids that maybe we could go get B. for some play time the next day. They were all over it so we called up my friend and let her know we were whisking away the kiddo so she could have a quiet Sunday to do whatever she wants. I think she was in shock until we actually drove away with him in the back seat.

We spent our day having a picnic, tossing the football, and peeing on things. I told you he's a typical two year old!

B wasn't very happy to be with us at first (separation anxiety to the max),
but Bella got him smiling by dancing for him. Too bad there's no video!

No zoom on the phone, but this is B running to kick the ball like Javi does.

Of course I snapped a photo. Who wouldn't?

#3. Cookies for a random neighbor.

We had some big chocolate chip cookies left over from a fundraiser from my sister on Wednesday. We decided to wrap them up and leave them on our neighbor's doorstep. Bella wrote a little note and then we snuck the tin onto her porch. The kids loved the sneaking part best. :)

#4. Trash pickup in our neighborhood.

Since we were already out, we decided to spend a few minutes picking up trash along our street and the main artery into our neighborhood.

At first Javi was really grumpy about it, but then he got into and didn't want to stop. Bella was happy because she was the "bag holder," but I caught onto her soon enough and made her actually help. Then they competed against each other to see who could pick up the most trash.

Moral of the story: Even gratitude is no match for sibling rivalry.

Pointing out "his" and "hers" trash. Yeah.

She's totally pinching his butt and I told him to smile
through the pain. Poor guy!

#5. Letting the Mountain Man sleep in.

I'm adding this in because we made a conscious effort to be super quiet on Saturday morning. In our home, the dad gets to sleep in on Saturdays and the mom gets to sleep in on Sundays. Unfortunately, we are never quiet enough for MM so he always gets up grumpy (meanwhile, I could sleep through anything).

The MM says that us making an effort to be super quiet means we normally don't bother trying to be quiet. That's not the case. This Saturday, the kids didn't yell at each other and they didn't fight and no one slammed a door or screamed bloody murder. When they started getting loud, I'd remind them we were telling dad thank you by letting him sleep, and it worked.

So it totally counts. I don't care what he says!

***I'll check back in next Sunday to share the upcoming week's random acts of thanks. If you're doing something similar, please share your link in the comments so we can learn from you and get ideas. We're already planning a shoe box, sending special things to Romania and to soldiers in combat zones, and making cards for nursing home residents. We're in need of more small ideas, please!***

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