Operation Christmas Child

Last night, the boys and I grabbed some pizzas and headed over to a friend's house (that also has 3 boys) to hang out and pack our shoeboxes together. We first showed them a video from Samaritan's Purse so they could see how happy these gifts will make other children. Then we set up 'stations' of different gifts for the boys to put in their boxes and let them take it from there. We had quite the selection - Play Doh, Silly Bandz, pens, socks, crayons, GoFish, CANDY, sanitizer, toothbrushes, cars and more. Fortunately for the box recipients, we did do a tiny bit of monitoring - otherwise, some little boy would have received one sock and a whole bunch of Fun Dip. D1 and I have been packing shoe boxes for at least 6 years but the boys never really had much to do with it, either because they didn't understand or because we forgot about the boxes until the morning they were due at church and had to quickly throw a few together and call it good.






Now that I gave you the overview, let me go ahead and give you a few details. You know, because I would hate to mislead you into thinking that our visit was serene and calming. Make no mistake, it was stressful. As usual. I believe it was one of my offspring that chose flatulence as a table topic. And then one of them thought it was appropriate to jump on the boys' beds {though they never even do this at home}. Oh and to go out with a bang, d2 kicked a ball inside the house and hit Ms. J in the head. Again, just one more thing that they don't do in our home, a home that has more balls than books {ok, not really and did I just type that?} I don't know what was going on but they acted like a bunch of caged animals that were just set free from the zoo. I'm just glad our friends are so laid-back. We are still friends, aren't we?