At our Moms on the Go Halloween party, Allana proudly posed for a picture with a cupcake that she cleverly designed all by herself. While the other children simply smeared on icing and sprinkled a few toppings on their cupcakes, Allana created a bootiful masterpiece. With a dab of vanilla icing, she created a small ghost. She added two sprinkles for the eyes and another for its mouth. The candy corn represents a tombstone in a graveyard. Isn’t it spootacular?
Any girl with a shoe fetish will tell you, you never throw away the boxes. These stylish ladies save the boxes and neatly line their closet shelves with rows of shoeboxes.
As for runners, there’s a never ending supply of shoeboxes or at least a new shoebox every three months or so.
During my life as a running SAHM, my shoes consisting mostly of running shoes, Crocs and flip-flops which I wear too often to keep neatly stored in rows of boxes, but rather piled in heaps on the bottom of my closet.
Although I don’t save the shoeboxes to store my shoes anymore, I do save the boxes for a charity first brought to my attention by my friend, Lori. I credit Lori for introducing me to two things: running and Operation Christmas Child. Under her direction, our moms group, Moms on the Go, began an Operation Christmas Child drive every November.
Throughout the year, my daughters save the toys from their fast food kid’s meals specifically for this charity. Naturally, they each prefer to fill a box for a girl and I fill a box for a boy. If our boxes seem a bit empty, I take the girls to the dollar aisle at Target and have them pick a few more items to add to their shoeboxes. This year, my girls will include drawings, photos and a letter telling a little about themselves.
For the first time last year, I pre-paid the postage for our shoeboxes on-line. After our boxes were delivered, I received an e-mail from Samaritan’s Purse naming the destination of packages. The e-mail included a link which highlighted the destination on the map and from that same link, my girls and I viewed images of children in Guyana holding their small treasure chests. My girls found the photos gratifying and I appreciated the brief geography lesson it offered. Most importantly, I truly appreciated the larger lesson Operation Christmas Child has taught my girls year after year: Our small boxes of joy have a huge impact on another child.
Thanks to Lori, my girls and I look forward to Operation Christmas Child every November. It brings us such pleasure to fill another child’s life with joy and love.
My oldest daughter, Allana, loves the Harry Potter series and even dressed as Hermoine for her school literacy parade. At her request, we celebrated her birthday yesterday in true Hogwarts fashion, but I’ll post more on that later.
To feed honor my daughter’s obsession birthday, I found a Harry Potter music video featuring The Fray’s How to Save a Life with some clips of the Harry Potter movies. The song has been featured on many shows such as Grey’s Anatomy and Cold Case, but this muggle thinks it works well for wizards too.
