Operation Christmas Child

Today for school we learned about the Samartians Purse and Operation Christmas Child. 

Our church does a campaign called Be Rich and during this campaign we all pack shoe boxes for Operation Christmas Child. This has been a holiday tradition of ours for years but this year we added the learning aspect to it.

We started off our lesson watching videos on the Samartians Purse site about how the boxes are distributed-success stories-and then we learned about Haiti (a country that is big on our families hearts) and the kids there. 

We discussed and made a list of items the kids and their families may need.

Things like cups, plastic utensils, ponchos, soap, tolietries, bandaids...

Then some items the girls wanted to include. 

A doll, a jump rope, note pads, candy.

And we headed or to the dollar store. 

I let the girls just start picking items. 

And they had a great time. "She will need this..." "Oh mom she needs socks!" This unknown child somewhere wasn't being thought Of as a stranger-she was a she and a friend they were shopping for. 

When we came home we got to packing...

That's what they decided! 

Items are

A book

A doll

Floss

A toothbrush and paste

A notebook

A jump rope

Poncho

Snack containers

Headbands

Soap and a wash cloth

Socks

Tissues

Bandaids

Suckers

Jolly ranchers

A small bag

Combs

Gum

We used every inch of space. The snack containers held the jolly ranchers 

The cups had the gum and plastic utensils.

And the we took the bandaids out of their box and put them into an Elsa ziploc bag and buy them in the little bag. That way each item they opened had a special something inside. 

Two full happy boxes were then prayed over and a letter and photo of us included. Letting our new friend know that we love her but most importantly JESUS loves her! 

Holidays.

So the holidays are upon us and it's going to be a different year. We will be in Georgia all holiday season. That means the first holiday ever I will have without my family. I am beyond devestated but logistically it's the best decision. 

My mom is coming for thanksgiving. But my dad is staying in Mississippi. 

Our family has always done xmas eve together-so I asked my parents to stay in MS for xmas to keep the tradition with my brother and sister in law and niece and nephews. It's hard to have a lot of kids, esp when one moves away. Because I had to move, it's not fair for my parents to have to chose. And it's not fair for my siblings to miss out on nana and pawpaw. 

My wish was to have everyone here for xmas-bc my dad is retired, my mom and sister are off for school holidays...but my brother works weird schedule. So that puts him not being able to make the trip. I had big plans for a big family Christmas with Christmas morning breakfast-(my brother is the breakfast chef) and a day in Jammies. But it's not going to happen and truthfully-it makes me really bummed. My nieces and nephews are my other kids and I have never missed a holiday with them. 

Since my holidays are missing family-I've been on a kick to get all my decor out-I thought if I could make my house merry it might fill the void of not having them here. 

So I pulled out all the decor and sure enough I'm missing some very key items. 1. Our elf on the shelf. I know I can go buy another but that's not the point. He was our little elf and he holds special memories.

2. Santa pictures for 3 years. I have 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2013. I'm missing 2007, 2011, 2012. They are no where online or in any photo box. 

3. A ton of family ornaments.

4. My manger scene 

These little things hold special memories for me. They help me feel like our family is near. And I'm just really sad that I have misplaced them. 

Great kids snacks

It has been a bit since we received our great kids snack box and I wanted to share a few more things we did with our box. 

My girls have never had granola (outside of a chocolate chip bar) so when we had multiple packets of granola in our box we made yogurt sundaes and added the granola in! 

aubrie kate also decided to make a "peanut butter and granola roll up" for a snack one afternoon! She was so proud of her creation! And she ate it all!

Mommy got in on snack this day. With lentil chips paired with some hummus. I am a huge chip fan and these did not disappoint!

The great kids snack box has been a huge blessing for this momma! Knowing that the kids are exploring new flavors and healthy ones at that sure does ease my mind! 

Raising Girls: the day I lost my....

Mind. 

Saturday's I usually leave for work around 1:30-2pm and arrive home 1:00-2:00am. It's a long night and Sunday mornings come EARLY. 

We have church at 9am and then youth at 11. So I am usually running on coffee fuel on Sunday's. 

I have one rule for Saturday nights: get your sunday morning stuff together. It just makes the morning rush easier when your jacket, shoes, outfit is all ready.

Well-this particular sunday morning nothing was done. No shoes out, no jackets out. It was where is my.....I can't find my....

A battle that I am in at this phase of life is to teach the girls to be responsible for their things. I happily wash, dry, fold and put hang ups on hangers. I deliver them to their rooms and neatly put them on their bed. Their job is to put them up. That simple. Our shoes are either in our closet or in the shoe basket by the door. (Atleast that is the rule) if you take them off in the car and forget to bring them in...that's on you. 

Some people think this is asking a lot of the girls but I truly believe that kids value their stuff when they are responsible to take care of it. 

So back to Sunday morning...I went to wake the girls up and all chaous broke loose. And  as a result they went to church without their jackets because they  had forgotten where they took them off. Luckily it wasn't too cold.

Afterwards I decided that maybe a closet full of clothes is too much for them to handle. So I narrowed down their wardrobe to 10 outfits. Then their shoes to boots, church shoes and play shoes...1 pair each. And then their jackets 1 each. 14 things. That's what they have for the month of November. 

 

Raising girls is more than making sure they look cute and become good wives and moms. I want to raise good girls that care about others and that care about taking care of the blessings that they have. It's not about the "things" it's about caring for them. Being thankful for them.