Day 10 - Two stories - The first smaller story was mailing our Christmas cards. I love mailing Christmas card and order just over 100 each year. I mailed probably 70ish cards. I will send about 25 to various people at GW. The remaining cards are handed to teachers, neighbors, etc... and mailed to anyone I receive a card from that didn't already get one.
Story 2 - was giving. All through the year I save money towards December. I say December rather than Christmas because we celebrate basically all month in a variety of ways. There are class parties, Advent things, the Nutcracker, Christmas Tea, etc... We also donate about 10-15% of the total to our charities of choice. Every month, we donate money to the Regional Food bank, NPR, Doctors without Borders, and St. John's. In December, we make one time donations to other things like our universities, Project Night Night, Child's Play, Variety Care, and the Myriad Gardens.
That is all well and good, but our children don't see much of that beyond putting money in the collection basket. It is important to me that we do some visible tangible giving too. So, we do project Christmas Boxes with the Wainrights in November and in December we take Angels off the tree at church and go buy items from their wish list. This year, Uncle Zach picked them up for us and the kids and I did the shopping. We talk a lot about why we are doing it and why people need these things. They help wrap every item and we bring them back to church the following week. The giving is important, but the conversations and lessons of helping others is too. In the big image on the right, they are sitting in front of the tree with the big boxes of gifts. It is a fun and important Christmas tradition for us.
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