Pre-Thankful

The kids don't have school this week, but we've been keeping busy (thus far. It's only Monday!)

Last Thursday night we went to a volunteer event at Share Our Selves, a local health care provider that services the homeless for their family night event. Everything was designed to help kids learn about the services they provide and the community they serve, in a kid-friendly way. They said they'll provide 1,600 meals this coming week to local families and individuals. Our group started off the evening packing produce bags to be handed out, with potatoes, onions, apples and carrots, and then the kids colored paper bags to hold the food bags and made cards to add to the pick up.

From there, we moved on to helping sort canned goods that had been donated over the past few weeks. We finished the evening cutting and tying the ends of fleece sheets to make blankets for those in need.

It felt good to be giving something back, and to be talking with the kids about how part of being thankful for what we have is doing good for others as well. Share Our Selves had really good materials available for parents on how to talk to kids about homelessness in a caring way (because it's also hard when kids are like "so we should just let them live with us!" to bring up the topics of mental illness or drug abuse, etc.) On the drive home we were talking about how the things we'd done, and the things we'd brought to donate would help people who were living on the street. Adam was quiet for a minute, thinking about the tooth brushes he'd helped me buy at the store the week before and asked "will the toothbrushes get squished, on the street?" Sorry buddy, I don't mean that the homeless live directly in the middle of the street, where cars are.

Friday morning was the kindergarten Thanksgiving play, and they were very cute. They ditched the out of date Pilgrims and Native American costumes, and all of the kids made "thankfulness vests" except for the five little girls were dressed up as turkeys (looked very cute, and also, very itchy.) Adam got reprimanded twice during the production, once for screwing around with a class mate, once for flapping his vest up and over his face a bunch. But, he delivered his line with confidence, and did some all star dancing and singing.

We spent Friday night and Saturday horsing around with friends, relaxing, and doing some planning for the upcoming holiday onslaught. The kids slept over at Mimi and Poppy's last night, and Tim and I were thankful for a night out!

This morning one of Ellie's girlfriends had a bunch of the gals over for a friendsgiving. I am truly thankful for Anabelle's mom, who took on a half dozen little girls along with her own twin toddlers and let them make slime and also apple sauce and pasta necklaces and have a feast.