Toys for Christmas

 we have a local organization that's called Toys for Christmas.  Citizens are invited to donate a toy or cash to a 'pool' or adopt a family.  For many years I have wanted to adopt a family for my child care but was unsure how the families would feel about helping so I chickened out & sat idle.  This year I was invited to join another child care provider in town to adopt a family & I jumped on it!

 We were lucky to have a little inside connection to 'our family'. So we knew alot more about their circumstances than most. We knew the mom is fighting cancer, the dad works in the cold, had the kids' first initials as well as their sizes & preferences that came on the sheet.



 We split the list between the child care homes & hung our sign up sheets by our doors.  I was a little worried when no one signed up for awhile but then after a little prompting on my part, they started signing up & shopping! OH getting those little bags of goodies for our child was such a fun feeling!!  Then on our annual shopping day, Mom & Bethany helped me fullfill the list.

   These photos are from our wrapping session we had @ the church on the 17th.   The first 4 are after we combined & divided up our goodies per child then the one table for the parents & family.

The bottom 2 are of the gifts all wrapped up & arranged around the tree in the room we were wrapping in :) pretty convenient I'd say!

With the help of our child care families, we were able to give each of the 3 children 8 gifts to unwrap, each parent 2, then a few for for the family to enjoy together, as well as a grocery card, gas cards, fresh veggies & oranges And that laundry basket chuck full of household supplies.

This was such an awesome experience I hope we are able to do it again next year & many more years to come!