September & October Kindness

Monday, November 21, 2011

With the backlog of posts that I have half-written to finish - I am resolving to write at least a post a day this week (possibly excluding the day of thanks, of course).  My drafts are seriously bursting at the seams and its a bit overwhelming.  So, here's some catch up:)

We are chugging right along on our 12 months of kindness commitment and I actually can't believe we are almost to the end of the year.  Its about time to start brainstorming for next year's list.  But before I get ahead of myself, let's do a little recap on our past few months of Studer Kindness, shall we?

August Kindness:  Donate toys & books to a pre-school

Well, this month was a bust.  I had full intentions of making a donation and then when I finally got to unpacking boxes after our move (in July), I took a look at our toys and books and realized they were all either a) missing pieces/parts b) half chewed (by either dog or child) c) damaged in some way by rips, slobber, baby puke, or crusty snacks...all of which is unacceptable to give to another child.

So, basically, we didn't do an August Kindness.  We did however throw away some toys/books that were in really bad shape - including The Foot Book which was ripped to shreds loved so bad that it was missing multiple pages.


September Kindness:  Donors Choose

If you feel the interest in helping young children learn through awesome projects by creative and inspired teachers, I urge you to check out Donors Choose.  It's an organization that helps everyday people donate money towards teachers' dreams of inspiring kids with different projects.  This is the third year in a row that we've worked with Donors Choose as our September Kindness.  We searched around and stumbled upon a teacher from Ebensburg (about 25 minutes from our home) that wants her first graders to learn about our local (and our famous) historical flood.  Not only was it an interest to us to be involved with a project that would teach kids about our local history - but we loved that she also wanted the students to learn about it from the animal's perspective.  adorable and totally relate-able for 6-7 year  olds.  We were inspired so we made a donation off the class.

A few weeks later (after our initial thank you), we got the notification that others had donated as well and the teacher was able to raise enough money for her inspired play about the Johnstown Flood from the animals perspective.


And then a few weeks after that, we got pictures of the kids in their new costumes!

three cheers for education!  hooray, hooray, hooray!

October Kindness:  Trick-or-treat for UNICEF
In October, we have consistently participated in UNICEF's Trick-or-Treat fundraiser, ever since I was introduced to the campaign during my college days in Circle K.  We are also lucky to get support from my Mom who participates with us by taking her trick-or-treat box to work and somehow always manages to get more donations than us (thanks, Mom!)

This year was the most fun we've had in our October kindness because Grey had somewhat of an idea of what we were doing.  As in he knows we put "money's" in the box for the "kids."  So every few days we'd empty out my change purse and Grey would drop a few more coins in the box while we talked about how its for the kids.  Who he thinks "the kids" are at this point is highly unclear.  As well as his understanding of money, but he was happy to help.




On to our last two kindnesses (hahha) for the year.  We have the 3rd annual CV Alumni Turkey Bowl this week (on Thanksgiving) and next month we are adopting a family again for Christmas.  We had also planned to drop off cookies to our former local retirement home...but now that we've moved - we'll be looking for a different cookie drop-off place!

For those of you that are interested in adopting a family for Christmas - we adopt "our" family through the Salvation Army.  Check out your local Salvation Army contact number here and call up to see if they support family "adoptions" for the holidays.  From the website, it didn't look like the Johnstown Salvation Army did - but then I called and she said that they had many families hoping to be "adopted."  So call today and be a Santa Clause to someone!  Time is running out as your gifts will need to be delivered by mid-December!  

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