One of my favorite holiday memories...

One of my mentors in life just blogged about giving this time of year, and it's provoked me to share a memory. I don't want to embarrass anyone, so we'll just say that a couple near and dear to me provided this memory for me.

They had heard of several families who going into the holidays were struggling to make ends meet, and decided on their own to do something about it. They purchased supplies for full holiday meals for each of the families, packaged them up, and attached anonymous notes letting them know that these items came from people who knew and cared about them, and simply wished them a merry and blessed Christmas.

They drove to each house, parked a little ways away, left the packages on the doorstep, rang the bell, and ran back to the car. They waited just long enough to make sure someone received the items, then drove away. No one, other than those who were there, ever knew who did this.

I know I love to get a great gift just like the next person. And I do love to give a good gift, but in my pride, partly I think I like to give great gifts because it's gratifying to me to know that on some level, I'm good. I'm a great gift giver. I don't give just to give, I give for that gratitude that follows the giving. It's still selfish giving. I will always look to this memory as the example of truly selfless giving, that doing good when no one's looking.

I don't remember who those families were. I don't remember what I got for Christmas that year. But I'll always remember that example of how to give.

Non-failure...

To follow up on that last flop in parenthood, thought I'd share a fun time Milo and I, and then Mike joined in too, shared getting ready for the holidays. I had debated whether he was too young to help with the baking of the famous sugar cookies, batch #1, but I figured, why not?

We started one afternoon before naps, I mixed, Milo helped me count how many cups or tablespoons of things that we needed, and then we rolled out the dough. I mostly rolled out, he told me what cookie cutters to use, where to put them on the dough, and then he pushed the cutters through the dough. Overall, it worked quite nicely. I had thought we'd let them cool and then decorate them after naps, but alas, the two-year-old demon reared its ugly head again, so we decorated the next day. That worked out well as it meant Mike was able to help. We frosted and Milo was on sprinkle patrol. Just don't tell anyone from our small group in OH how many times Milo licked his fingers between cookies. I tried to wipe as many times as possible, but that colorful sprinkly goodness was too much for him :)

Overall though, a grand success, hopefully one to be repeated a few more times before Christmas actually arrives. And Blogger is being ridiculous with pictures so I'll see if I can post some later...