1st Day of Christmas

We started our Advent countdown to Christmas and engagement in service yesterday.  For the first day, the girls decorated their own nutcrackers (they LOVE nutcrackers - seeing them go at coloring them was something else, though - Clara colored all the white hair blue!!).  Today, we went to the store to buy diapers for a diaper drive to benefit babies of local women having a rough start at parenting.

The girls loved picking out diapers - and as they did, they looked at some of the toys in the same aisle and Clara said "Mama, the babies need toys, too!"  It was such an innocent, generous spirit - so they each picked a toy to bring, too.  When we got to the diaper drive, we found it was also a full-on celebration, complete with Santa and one of our local mascots, Mo!

Unfortunately, all of this was in the worst-lit room ever (presumably to enhance the look of the trees there on display) so the pictures are terrible.  Elena was all about Mo - Clara preferred to stay off the stage where he was, and so Christina went up with Elena while Clara waited.  When Clara and Christina moved a few steps down the stage, Mo noticed Clara and seemed to think she was waiting - so he hopped off the stage and went to her.  Oh, the tears!  Mo immediately backed off, curled up in a ball to appear smaller, and covered his eyes.  (Mo is actually a kid - probably a 7-10 year old kid, so
it was sad all around).  Clara recovered, and we went to wave to Mo to show him there were no hard feelings.

Then we went to go see the less-intimidating trees!

Clara admired the ornament that Santa handed her - she was much more interested in Santa, and even though she wouldn't touch him or sit on his lap (which was certainly fine with us - isn't that kind of an odd thing to expect a kid to want to do?) she did greet him, talk to him, and accept this gift.

Elena was sold on the hot chocolate flowing freely, and also her signed picture of Mo. :)

 


It was a nice way to start showing the girls that helping others is fun - certainly there are not usually this many extrinsic rewards, but it's a good place to start with two three year olds!