Thanks for the giving

The oldest two went downstate to visit with their father for the holiday, luckily we did not hear of any issues while they were gone.  :) When they came back up, they brought up the gifts that MY grandmother was sending to us.  This woman is quite a mystery to me sometimes, and I am thankful to have her in my life, even if it is not as much as I would like.

She bought all 8 kids coats for NEXT year.  Because her sister, yeah, my Great-Aunt, worked at Sears, they go and get the coats there.  70$ coats for about 20$ is hard to pass up! (with employee discount and kidvantage saving on top of sales)  There were a few coats that were just not going to work out for next year as they fit this year, so we piled into the van and switched them out for bigger.

Not only do my kids have awesome coats for this year, they have next years set as well.  Nice.

I like to shop for stuff at the end of the season, but this is such a small town, there isn't always a selection at the end of the season.  :(

So that was a very big part of our thanks for giving holiday.

We did some giving of our own this past week as well.  The high school was hosting a canned food drive, so we had DS1 bring in about 70 jars of baby foods.  I figured that the big canned goods always get donated, but hardly ever baby stuff.

DS2 was doing a sock drive.  For his class, DS2 was going to get a holiday party if his class could bring in 50 pairs of socks.  (new of course)  I went out and bought a pack of 10 toddler socks and he happily took them in.  The sad part of the entire thing, no one else brought in any socks.  It came down to the last day that people could bring in socks and DS2 was a bit sad he was not going to have a party because no one else was giving (it was not just his class either, the highest number donated in a single class was 30.)  I went out to the store and bought enough so that if no one brought in any socks, he could still get his party.  It was a give, give, and win, win.  DS2 will get his party, and needy people will have warm toes.  :)

Did you have any giving or receiving this past holiday?