Last
month when I stopped in to make a deposit at our credit union I also picked up
my shoebox. Every year at Christmas
time, as a family, we select a charity.
Usually we give to our local foodbank and then give our leftover change
after our Christmas shopping is complete to the Salvation Army red kettle.
This
year we decided to do something different.
We decided to give a gift to a child in another country. My son and I used to do this when he was
younger and we thoroughly enjoyed it and I am happy to have the opportunity to
do this with my girls. I hope we will
continue to do this in the future.
It is a
lot of fun to decide first of all who will get our gift? A boy or a girl? How old of a child? And then of course, what will we give them?
We
decided on a boy since we are a household full of girls (save for our male cat
Henry). And they chose an age range of 5
to 8 years old. The first thing we did
was go through everything we had in the house.
From
the school supplies box we found crayons, water colors, pencils, markers and a
note pad. Then the toiletry bin where I
store our extras yielded a brand new toothbrush with sharks on it and a tube of
toothpaste - perfect! Next I went
through our gift box under my bed and found gum and two toy race cars.
The day
after Halloween my youngest told me she wanted to share some of her Halloween
candy with "our boy". We went
through her bag and she selected all the Jolly Rancher candies and suckers she
had plus a package of fruit snacks (you can't send chocolate anything because
it might melt). We put her collection of
candies into a Christmas themed zippered sandwich bag and she was very happy
about it.
While
my oldest was at a school dance the youngest and I headed off to pick up one
other item. At the craft store we picked
up a couple T-shirts on sale for 2/$6
They are nice heavy duty shirts and come in great colors. Plus the price was unbeatable.
We
wanted to make sure we filled up the box as full as we could and I think we
accomplished that quite nicely. I hope
our box brings some serious joy to this young fellow. I know it made us happy to do it.
It
doesn’t cost a lot to do a lot either.
It mainly just takes the time you expend to put it all together.
If your are interested here is the link:
Love Samaritans purse. This year we will be going through the World Vision gift catalogue and choosing some gifts to send. $100 buys a baby goat, $35 warm clothes, $100 supplies a medical clinic, $60 gives a girl an education. I love that world vision is doing this. We have always had a sponsor child(even in childhood...my 32 year old sister is named after the first girl we ever sponsored). Still this helps multiple families and villages. This year for the first time ever, there was a $35 feeds a hungry family in Canada. This made me so sad.
ReplyDeleteI think I may pick up a shoe box as well. It is so fun to fill them.
I couldn't agree more. It is a wonderful organization! I love to fill up the box too. So fun.
DeleteThis is one of my very favorite activities throughout the year--I love clearance, and coupons, and contest just to fill them, it is one of the most worthy things we do as a family--anything I make on my paypal account goes directly for shopping for the boxes, we just finished our here at Calvary Chapel Buhl. It was a great event for all-- but gosh we were all tired in the end
ReplyDeleteHow wonderful! I dropped mine off at the credit union after we stuffed it full. Just love doing this. I'm planning to do two next year. One for a girl an one for a boy. I'll shop year round this time to collect fun stuff for the kids.
DeleteSometimes it is hectic to work and take care of kids. Day care centre is best option for working moms to take care of the kids while you can work your work.
ReplyDelete