Snip Toes and Pearls

Yesterday was a full day of Battle4ACure. Emma's Nana and Graddad picked her up for their weekly Saturday morning breakfast date and took her to choir rehearsal for the Redeemer Children's Christmas program. Shortly after 8AM Daddy, Cody and I were in the car headed to Leander for our Christmas Hope Box Wrapping party.

The Battle4ACure crew along with volunteers gathered at the Leander VFW. Amanda made a few announcements and we prayed over the toys. A lot of love went into those boxes! Everyone chose a paper with the name and information of the child/children they would be choosing gifts for. Amanda had the toys/gifts organized into piles according to age, gender etc. It was challenging at first trying to juggle keeping up with Cody, but he was well behaved and it was smooth sailing once he fell asleep in his stroller. There's no telling how many presents we wrapped. David and I shared a table and mainly chose families with multiple siblings. I follow most of these "fighters" on their caringbridge websites so it was very special to be able to choose toys to send to them and their siblings. It was a very long day, but worth every minute. In the end, all the toys were wrapped and are in boxes ready to ship. Thankfully, Amanda's Mom is giving them all a "once over" checking addresses, etc. for us and taking them to the post office on Monday! We can't wait to see pictures of the children receiving their gifts.

Huge thanks to everyone who helped make this possible. Especially one of my girlfriends from High School, Lindsey Redden Cram who not only donated two huge bags full of gifts, but also brought her family to help us wrap yesterday! It means a lot to have support of my friends.

We scheduled the wrapping party from 10AM-Noon, but we didn't leave until 2:30PM. After a quick bite to eat, diaper bag re-stock, we picked Emma up and took the children to my parents house. David and I headed to Abiding Love Lutheran Church in S. Austin. Amanda, her Mom, David and I volunteered at a parent's night out hosted by another local pediatric cancer non-profit, Garrett'sKidStrong. I believe this was their 5th annual party where children w/cancer, and those who have kicked cancer's butt and their siblings come to play, eat pizza, make crafts, and receive gifts from Santa while their parents enjoy a date night, get Christmas shopping done etc.

A few weeks ago David and I were in the car and he mentioned dressing up like Santa to deliver gifts to kids w/cancer. I thought that was incredibly sweet of him and mentioned it to Amanda. As it turns out she had just been in touch w/Colleen the founder of Garrett'sKidStrong and their Santa from previous years had just retired. :) It was a wonderful evening and it was so inspiring to meet so many children who fought cancer and won! As you can imagine, we came home and crashed (after picking up our own children.)

This morning during Sunday School Emma had rehearsal again for the Christmas program. We enjoyed a particularly wonderful worship service at Redeemer. The Kylan Kaye band led the service along with our HS youth director Matt. The band was amazing and it was so much fun to experience some of that ENERGY I remember from HS Youth. During the service, those who wanted to went forward and wrote on posters covering the altar w/prayers. I prayed for all those enduring cancer, guidance for Battle4ACure and the amazing teachers and ministry team at Redeemer.

This afternoon we're relaxing at home. After church and lunch we watched a "Flintstone Christmas" while I folded laundry and Cody napped in David's arms. Tonight we're going to Bee Cave to deliver a huge box of gifts to one of David's co-worker's whose son was recently diagnosed w/Leukemia. Then we're going to look at Christmas lights on the drive home.

PS- I wore snip toe boots and pearls to church today, hence the blog title.