25 Days of Giving

This year we decided to make our Advent a little different by doing at least one Act of Giving each day leading up to Christmas Day. I have to tell you - this was one of the best things that we have done in a long time!

Before December 1st, we sat down and made a list of potential ideas of things we could do and then when the 1st came, we got to work. Here are a few of the things that we did...

A gift for the UPS man (the card said 'Thanks for trudging up our hill for us') 

I order a lot of things from the internet...Have you seen our hill?  :)

One night we picked up the tab for the car behind us at the drive through. That was so fun! The expression of the girl at the counter was priceless :)

One of my favorites was leaving gifts for the garbage men....

 They come really early (before it gets light even) so we knew that we needed the gifts to be evident so that they wouldn't throw them away. Brad put them out on his way to work and took this picture. 

Bennett made these great signs for the fronts of the bags. Aren't they great? :)

When we first thought of doing the acts of giving, the one thing that Bennett wanted to do was give a Ninjago book to his friend Jude. We bought it right away and just held on to it until the right time... 

Well, Jude got the flu the 2nd week of December, so we knew that was the right time for the surprise :)

You can't really tell in the picture, but Bennett is sneaking up to Jude's front door to leave the package. It was so cute!

 On Bennett's field trip to the cathedrals we fed parking meters

A gift for our mail lady

Some goodies for the fire station

Making goodies for his friends at school

Gifts for the teachers

We did other things like adopt angels from the Angel tree at church, shop with and for families in need through our Sunday School class, giving food to our church's food pantry, etc. 

I LOVE LOVE LOVE doing this! I have to admit that I totally got into this more than Bennett did... but that's ok. I think that he will 'get' it as he gets older. He did enjoy the giving, but he just wasn't as excited about it as I was generally. I just think there is something so exciting about giving in the spirit of Christ and praying over those people who are receiving those gifts. What a blessing!

This is something we will definitely be doing each year during Advent! And maybe again just randomly throughout the year ;) There is no feeling as good as giving.

The last Project Life 2012 post is in the works! Stay tuned :)