Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Happy Birthday Rae

I've neglected posting here for a couple months but I'm going to try to catch up. Some posts may be posted well after their post date.

Rae's birthday was in December. It was the night of her school Christmas program and also it was a night I was supposed to have parenting time with them. Since we wouldn't get home until right before bedtime, we worked out a compromise so that I would take them for a snack and then they would go back home and go to bed at their mother's.

I had a gift for Rae, a Furreal Friend. It's a battery operated stuffed dog that reacts in different ways when you play with him. Except that it didn't come with a battery.

After going to Burger King for a snack and to open her gift, we had to stop at the local Walgreen's, buy some batteries, and beg to use a screwdriver. I wanted to make sure her new toy was working before she went back to her mom's.

Monday, December 3, 2007

Our Good Deed For The Day

After church I planned to drive my kids back out to their mom's. Stepdaughter "Hazel" was having some friends over for tea.

Well when we got to church we saw it was "food delivery" Sunday. Every year around the holidays our church collects food for the poor. They then box it up and people from the church volunteer to deliver it. Each box is clearly marked who it is for, how many adults and how many kids, and comes with a Mapquest map.

Since I had built in some extra time before I had to have the kids back to their mom's, I volunteered us to take 3 of the boxes of food. There were over 80 boxes in all, as we attend a pretty large church.

First grader "Rae" has been known to be embarrassingly blunt so we had a little discussion on the way about what kind of remarks or questions not to ask people in front of them so as not to hurt their feelings.

After the first delivery the kids remarked "they didn't look poor" but at the 2nd delivery there was a toddler running around in just a diaper and a horribly dirty fish tank. And the woman at the 3rd delivery said that she was now "living in her landlady's basement."

The kids enjoyed helping carry the food. Besides the big box, there was a bag of apples for each family and also a bag with some frozen meat (chicken and beef) for each family. Hopefully it will be a lesson in helping others and also in being thankful for what we have.