I’m taking a break from my usual blog post to write about a BIG mission project I’m leading to help my community. I’m excited to tell you about it and hopefully you can help me!

Last year I started a new mission with my church to help bring Christmas cheer to needy families in my community. It’s called Gifts of Grace – Toys for East Plano.

I work with my MOPS group to collect toys for low income families. We partner with a church who serves mostly an underprivileged, multicultural congregation. They find families in need during a big free community Thanksgiving dinner they host. Then a few weeks before Christmas, these families line up outside the church’s gym (rain, sleet or snow) and we pass out toys to the parents. The toys are already wrapped and put into a garbage bag to hide them from the kids. These are probably the only gifts the children will receive, so the parents like to say they are from them.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into last year when I started this! We collected over 440 gifts, probably wrapped a fourth of them, sorted them into age groups, delivered them to East Plano and then helped hand out the gifts to families. Needless to say it was a chaotic month, but worth every bit of effort to know that these children were going to receive at least one toy that Christmas.

My children also learned a valuable lesson and I hope to help mold them into generous givers. This is one project the whole family can be involved with. The kids actually get to see and hand the toys to the people they are helping. Seeing the children help and the smiles on the parents faces makes this project so rewarding.

This year we hope to double the amount of toys! I would LOVE if you could send us a wrapped toy or at least spread the word on your own blog, Twitter and Facebook pages.

If you are in the DFW area and would like to volunteer to help wrap, sort and pass out gifts, I would so love the help!! Thanks to all of you who helped last year. Words cannot express how thankful I am for you!!

You can help by:

• Purchasing a NEW toy.

• Mail your wrapped or gift bagged toy with the tag below attached by Nov. 29th to:

Grace Community Church
Att: Toys for East Plano
4501 Hedgcoxe Road
Plano, Texas 75024

• Volunteer if you are local. You can click here for more details about volunteer opportunities.

• Help me promote this by adding the following button to your side bar, blogging, tweeting or facebooking about it.

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Also, be sure to check out Printables by Amy! Find easy and affordable digital files to download and print at home or at your local quick print shop. Each product is custom designed by Amy, a professional graphic designer. Amy makes do-it-yourself projects a breeze!

School is out! Guess who is home all day for the next two weeks?

Yes, my almost 6 year old kindergartener! He’s crazy and loud. A typical boy who has a ton of energy. Believe it or not, I am really looking forward to taking some time off work to hang out with this wild little thing. Let me tell you a few reasons why.

1. He’s pretty much a hoot to be around. Last week, I heard him yelling at the TV when a cartoon character on Noggin was singing a song about the earth making the flowers. “Mom! They’re lying! The earth doesn’t make the flowers, God does!”

2. He just lost one of his top front teeth and looks so cute with 3 missing teeth. I can’t believe his top teeth are already coming out!

3. He is really excited to help me decorate our gingerbread house, which I’m obsessed with now. I can’t wait to show you photos!

4. He’s the perfect age for Christmas. It will be magical to him. He understands the story of Jesus, plus he still thinks Santa can fit down the chimney.

5. He’s old enough to keep his little sister entertained. Even though there is usually a lot of screaming involved.

I may go a little crazy while he’s home too, but when I do, I’ll try to remember what a sweet little boy I am blessed with to mold and shape into a wonderful young man.

We passed out some of the toys from our toy drive this weekend. My awesome friend Kimberly and her family came too. People were lined up, many with up to 7 children, to pick up toys.

Our boys were very happy to help. It made my heart melt watching them get excited to give away toys.

None of them asked if they could have one either. Shocking!

The best was when they handed the bag of gifts over to the mother who would then give these to her own children. Seeing the parent’s happy faces made us all so proud!

Even the little ones helped out.

We passed out over 200 presents to 67 families that day. Willow Creek Fellowship will do this again 2 more times before Christmas.

Not only was Willow Creek passing out toys, but also giving free music lessons to community children. As we were leaving a few members were going to deliver 200 gift bags to nursing home residents. This was all done in just a few hours, the people of this church never rest. I was totally in awe and motivated to do more for others. As we handed out toys, I thought about how little of my time this took and how many people were affected by this. After being apart of this giving day, I really hope I don’t go back into the hustle and bustle of doing things just for me. I want to make time to help my community. I’m not sure what I will do next. Whatever it is, I hope it will benefit others in some meaningful way.

Right now I’m going to focus on my little boy and hope that he grows up with a giving and serving heart.

We did make it just in time for his basket ball game that afternoon where he scored the team’s first basket of the season!! (he’s on the far right with his hands in the air.)

We ran around like crazy that day. I crashed and burned by 8pm, but in the end, it was all worth it. There were over 200 children that were given a bit of joy and that makes me smile:-)

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Also, be sure to check out Printables by Amy! Find easy and affordable digital files to download and print at home or at your local quick print shop. Each product is custom designed by Amy, a professional graphic designer. Amy makes do-it-yourself projects a breeze!

We got the Toys R Us toy book!!! My son got to work on his wish list yesterday. I didn’t realize what a Star Wars and video game freak he really is. Is that every 5 year old? Or just mine? Well, if you need a good 45 minutes to an hour to yourself, just sit your kid down with a toy catalog, scissors, glue stick and my wish lists! I’ve never seen this kid so happy or so focused as I did yesterday. ha! We made wish lists for all Grandmas, Santa and just because. Today he will finish writing the names of each toy…. yeah… I like to add a little work in on the fun:-)

It’s pretty crazy how our kids think they will get anything and have no worries. I try to explain how some children in the world don’t even have clean water to drink. I think the best thing I’ve done this year, which has actually sunk into my boy’s little brain, was to do the Operation Christmas Child boxes. He watched the video about people delivering the boxes to the children. It really helps for kids to see it on the screen, the homes where the children live and how many are children lined up to get these boxes, which may be the only gift they have ever received. My son helped me put together four boxes and not once did he ask if he could have something in the boxes (a first!) because he was so excited to be helping another child.

My MOPS group put together a bunch of boxes yesterday and the kids were happy to help stack them up nice and neat.

I hope my children will grow up to be givers. The best we can do as parents is to give ourselves and hopefully they will learn by our example. If you have never participated in Operation Christmas Child, please go to this web site to learn more.

FYI- Here is a link to a Toys R Us 15% OFF Coupon!! Valid until Nov. 20th.

Be sure to join Amy on Facebook for more fun!
Also, be sure to check out Printables by Amy! Find easy and affordable digital files to download and print at home or at your local quick print shop. Each product is custom designed by Amy, a professional graphic designer. Amy makes do-it-yourself projects a breeze!

Ever wonder if you’re a good parent and your kids will turn out okay? I sometimes, I mean, I always wonder about this. Especially, when you look outside and see this…

Well, this week I got a glimpse of what some of my parenting has accomplished so far and I had to write about it.

My husband and I want our kids to know the value of a dollar and what to do with that dollar, so I’ve been teaching my son about money through an awesome program that Dave Ramsey has for kids. You learn about how to save, spend and give. “Give” being something that he was NOT too fond about at first. For over a month, we have been giving our son chores to do. With the money he earns, we put 10% in an envelope for church. They have a cool coin machine the kids can put their change in called “Pennies from Heaven.” He just loves doing this! With giving in mind, I always mention things we could do like helping sick kids by taking them activities and toys. Sending drawings to our troops. Things you say that you really don’t think is sinking in to your 5 year old’s mushy, Batman obsessed brain, but you say it anyway! 

A few days ago, we drove by a new children’s hospital that is almost finished being built near our home and my son said, “Now we can go cheer up the sick kids!!” I guess it’s not as mushy as I thought…

Then, today he came home from Vacation Bible School telling me that the zebra is dead and we need to help the kids in Africa. Huh??? After I wrapped my head around what that meant, I remembered our church is trying to raise money to send to Nigeria for a water filtration system. Okay, they must have shown a video with a dead zebra that drank the dirty water??? (Any of you VBS volunteers out there fill me in please:-) Well, whatever they did worked because my son actually gave up his highly anticipated Chick-Fil-A dinner money so he could put it in the bucket at church! Any of you with kids know that this is a major deal to give up anything fried that comes with a toy!!

The verdict is still out on whether my kids will turn out to be the well rounded, loving, highly motivated, giving, happy, smart adults that I hope and pray for them to be… but at least for now something is sinking in.

**Update on the money given by the kids:

By the end of the week, they raised close to $7,000 to build a new well and more for our Nigeria friends!! Wow!! Isn’t that great? I’m so excited my son was involved. Our church rocks!

Be sure to join Amy on Facebook for more fun!
Also, be sure to check out Printables by Amy! Find easy and affordable digital files to download and print at home or at your local quick print shop. Each product is custom designed by Amy, a professional graphic designer. Amy makes do-it-yourself projects a breeze!

Ever wonder if you’re a good parent and your kids will turn out okay? I sometimes, I mean, I always wonder about this. Especially, when you look outside and see this…

Well, this week I got a glimpse of what some of my parenting has accomplished so far and I had to write about it.

My husband and I want our kids to know the value of a dollar and what to do with that dollar, so I’ve been teaching my son about money through an awesome program that Dave Ramsey has for kids. You learn about how to save, spend and give. “Give” being something that he was NOT too fond about at first. For over a month, we have been giving our son chores to do. With the money he earns, we put 10% in an envelope for church. They have a cool coin machine the kids can put their change in called “Pennies from Heaven.” He just loves doing this! With giving in mind, I always mention things we could do like helping sick kids by taking them activities and toys. Sending drawings to our troops. Things you say that you really don’t think is sinking in to your 5 year old’s mushy, Batman obsessed brain, but you say it anyway! 

A few days ago, we drove by a new children’s hospital that is almost finished being built near our home and my son said, “Now we can go cheer up the sick kids!!” I guess it’s not as mushy as I thought…

Then, today he came home from Vacation Bible School telling me that the zebra is dead and we need to help the kids in Africa. Huh??? After I wrapped my head around what that meant, I remembered our church is trying to raise money to send to Nigeria for a water filtration system. Okay, they must have shown a video with a dead zebra that drank the dirty water??? (Any of you VBS volunteers out there fill me in please:-) Well, whatever they did worked because my son actually gave up his highly anticipated Chick-Fil-A dinner money so he could put it in the bucket at church! Any of you with kids know that this is a major deal to give up anything fried that comes with a toy!!

The verdict is still out on whether my kids will turn out to be the well rounded, loving, highly motivated, giving, happy, smart adults that I hope and pray for them to be… but at least for now something is sinking in.

**Update on the money given by the kids:

By the end of the week, they raised close to $7,000 to build a new well and more for our Nigeria friends!! Wow!! Isn’t that great? I’m so excited my son was involved. Our church rocks!

Be sure to join Amy on Facebook for more fun!
Also, be sure to check out Printables by Amy! Find easy and affordable digital files to download and print at home or at your local quick print shop. Each product is custom designed by Amy, a professional graphic designer. Amy makes do-it-yourself projects a breeze!