Five good deeds

Every December, I try to do at least one good deed. This particular deed must capture or represent the spirit of Christmas in some way. I always try to include the children in this act, because I want them to grow up feeling compassion for others and to have a giving heart. Giving to charity is so important to me, especially during the holidays, and I want the kids to understand that this is an important time of the year to remember other people who are not as fortunate as they are and to give in some way to help others. I also want them to know that Christmas is an important time to let the people we are close to know just how much we appreciate them, appreciate all they do for us and give something to them in return.

Up until this year, it was usually one or two good deeds we did. But this year, we are blessed with having done five good deeds in helping others for Christmas.

These are the good deeds we have done thus far:

1. Participated in the food drive
2. Gave to a charity
3. Helped a family for Christmas
4. Took cookies to our friends (still doing that!)
5. Gave Jesse’s teacher a Christmas gift

I wanted to also give a toy to the Toys For Tots program but totally forgot about it then I kept missing it when they held it somewhere.

But at least we got 5 good deeds done for the month.

If I ever find out about a Toys for Tots drive going on somewhere close by, I’ll definitely make it a point to get out there! I hope it’s not too late. But if it is, I will look into something similar.

And it looks like we’ll be doing another good deed for the month, too: My neighbor is leaving town until after Christmas and has asked us to keep an eye out for any packages being delivered to her porch. She is worried about them being stolen so we’ll be holding onto her packages for her until she gets back. We are happy to help.

Yay for doing good deeds!

Pictures from today

The other day, I came across a news story about an image of the Virgin Mary being on some grill. I studied that picture good and hard but failed to see any resemblance to the Virgin Mary there. I shook my head and shrugged it off as being something that people will see what they want to see.

It reminded me of an item I saw on eBay a looong time ago. Something about a grilled cheese with the Virgin Mary on it.

Well, here ya go, folks. It's not the Virgin Mary, but actually a Scottie I saw in a piece of quesadilla my son threw onto the floor:


Isn't he such a cutie snookums? I think we should name him. Let's call him Hogarth.

I have wanted to start wearing contact lenses for some time. Partly because I'm so tired of "looking out of windows" so much every day. I don't wear my glasses every single minute of the day. Sometimes I take them off to rub my eyes, when I'm taking a shower, if I have to go out in the rain outside, when I go to sleep, etc., but I do wear them most of the time. I hate wearing them, though. I wish I could wear contacts. My husband says my life is too busy for contacts. And my sister-in-law told me her son used to wear them, but they kept popping out all the time and it was a big hassle. Sigh. We REALLY need to come up with something better! I don't think surgery could fix my vision.

Anyway, part of the reason why I hate wearing the glasses is because the big thick...thingy on the left-side band catches my hair and sometimes yanks off a strand when I take the glasses off. Yes, sometimes that does hurt! I swear, I'm going to go bald if I keep wearing these glasses! This is the part that I mean, the thick part, right at the very edge:

Maybe new glasses would put a stop to that. Still wish contacts were possible, though.

On Sunday, Jennifer bought this toy at Fred Meyer. It's a toy piece of cheese with plastic mice to go inside it. She went nuts over it at first. Then she decided to get creative with it:

I wonder if she gave their boat a name. It's bad luck to have a boat without a name!

In honor of Cinco de Mayo, I planned to make tacos for dinner. Jennifer hates tacos so I made her and her brother quesadillas instead. Well, when I took the chub of hamburger out of the fridge, I was dismayed to see that most of it was frozen solid:

It may not look frozen but, believe me, it was rock solid. I set it out to thaw, keeping a close eye on the time it was sitting out. When I was able to cut it up, I cut the portion for dinner, wrapped it up and put it back into the fridge. Then I wrapped up the other cut portions then put them into the freezer.

My refrigerator is always doing that. It freezes so much of the stuff put on the higher shelves. Sometimes I'll happen to notice the dial turned all the way up to 9, and Jennifer SWEARS she didn't touch it. (When she was younger, she had a bad habit of playing with the temperature dial in the fridge.) I'm beginning to think that maybe somebody just hits it by accident when rummaging around in the fridge. I don't think the dial would be turning itself up all by itself...?

It's a real headache to live with, though. And it seems that no matter where I put the eggs, they still get frozen, too! I hope we can get a new fridge soon, so that everything inside of it would not turn to ice or get super-cold.

Still, Jesse sure enjoyed eating frozen applesauce one day.

Today, when I took the trash out, I noticed mushrooms in the front yard. First I took pictures of the 'shrooms then flowers growing in front of my house.

Here are the flowers:



And here are the mushrooms:




It rained A LOT today. It's like the rain was on and off all day. I was not able to take a picture of the rain, though.

'Tis the season to be giving

It's that time of the year again! That time when we need to reach out to others and try to help others in some way, so that other people who have it hard will be able to enjoy their holidays. I have been reading about all of these job losses everybody is going through and it makes me sad because I know it means a lot of families are going to be hurting this Christmas. There are so many hardly able to put food on the table, as it is. But at this time of the year, I know it's important to reach out and try to help the homeless and the families who are struggling to get by. They need it now more than ever.

This is something I have been trying to stress to Jennifer. It's more important to give than to receive. It's more important to help others who don't have the help they need. Every year I try to do something charitable during the Christmas season. This year, we're doing three things so far: Donating canned goods to a food drive Jennifer's school is holding, donating a toy to Toys For Tots and sponsoring a child for Christmas in my church's Angel Tree program. I've done the Angel Tree thing before, and even though I could not be there to actually stay, I dropped off the donation and just felt so good inside for doing something like that. (The program is for children in families whose parents are imprisoned.) Of course I want to do more, but there's only so many charitable events I am able to learn about going on in time.

But the big thing I want to do this year is pass on to Jennifer just how important it is to be charitable. I am trying to stress to her the importance of giving to others, and I really want this to be a part of her character when she grows up.

My mom made sure it was a part of mine.

When I was little, my mom relied heavily on charitable help. With seven kids and a struggling income, it was hard for us to have enough food to eat or even presents for Christmas. Many times, charitable organizations, and even our local Catholic church, helped us out. In return, we did the same. My mom got all of us involved in participating in the gift and food drives the church held, and I spent many a time during my high school years volunteering to help struggling families who had no money, clothing or food. Sometimes, we even took food out of our own cabinets to give to others who had none! So I was definitely raised having that sensitivity to others who were not as fortunate as us.

This is something I want to pass on to my own children. I want them to know how important it is to help those who are in need. I have been spending a lot of time explaining to Jennifer that there are kids out there who have it harder than she does. They don't have a Mommy or Daddy. They don't have a lot of toys. Their clothes are old and torn up. They don't have a home to live in, a bed to sleep in or even enough food to eat. This is why I get upset with her when she wastes her food. I don't like waste. And I have told her many times there are people in this world who are starving and don't have as much food to eat as she does.

When we went to donate to Toys For Tots the other day, I had to take the time to explain to Jennifer why we were doing this. It was because we were helping a family out there who couldn't afford Christmas presents. We were helping a little boy or a little girl who wouldn't have a Christmas present if it weren't for us helping them.

She looked at the toy Marine truck we were donating and said, "I wish I could get this."

I looked at her and said to her the same thing my mother said to me years ago, when I felt sad over giving away one of my toys: "That's going to make some little boy very happy on Christmas."

She looked at me and her eyes lit up. She clutched that toy as though it were very special and said, "I want to give it to them."

That was when I could see it. That was when I knew. Maybe, just maybe, she was finally starting to get why we even give in the first place.