Today changed from being a very simple day to being crazy fun! At first my plan was just to take the gifts we'd made for Serenity's teachers to school and to choose one place to donate some money to. We ended up choosing the world wildlife federation again, since Serenity responded to my question by meowing. We chose to help elephants, for Donovan, tigers for Serenity and giraffes, because she has an imaginary giraffe friend she often feeds, making leaf cupcakes and such. So that was a nice morning. Then the day got really wonderful!
My mom had a great idea. She was going to give a 5,000 dollar charitable donation this year, and she thought we could buy things to donate so the kids could feel involved in the whole event. So today, Jennifer, Casey, Donovan, Mom and I spent a few hours shopping for our local children's hospital. They had a wishlist posted online of various games, toys for their playroom, and other ideas for things they needed. And we got to buy it! 5,000 goes a long way in the toy aisle. We got a play kitchen, a table and chairs, two playstations, lots of games, movies, toys, play-doh, clothes, oh just everything we could pile into our carts. Donovan was a real trooper for this trip, which was nice since I almost never take him for extended shopping trips. He played hide and seek with Grandma, asking "where nama?" everytime she'd go around the corner, and "there nama! I found her!" when he saw her. He was also nice to Jennifer, which was nice. Since she bribed him with Smarties when she was babysitting he doesn't say no as often to her. =) He even said her name and gave her kisses.
After school we collected the grandkids from USchool and headed to St. Francis to deliver stuff. They all enthusiastically dove into the truck and vans and hauled toys to the dollies. It was so much fun to see their energy! Serenity said we got to be elves AND volunteers =) Perfect. =)
