December was a fun, busy, wonderful month! We usually put our decorations up the day after Thanksgiving but I did it right after Halloween this year- and I don’t regret it! š We paused the Christmas festivities and were thankful and grateful at Thanksgiving then we were right back to the Christmas spirit!
We tried to focus on service this month so we did something each weekend to do service. We brought Grandpa along with us as much as we could.
The first week we did The Giving Machine at Crown Center. Each Christmas season our church does a #LightTheWorld. They have a few vending machines called Giving Machines that they have in a few places around the country. You can go and punch the number in for the item you want and just like a vending machine it drops the card to the bottom but instead of taking something you leave it there and they distribute whatever people donate to the different charities. There was local charities for food, clothes, and blankets or a safe place to stay. There were also world wide charities you could donate a chicken or water or things like that. This year we got to have a giving machine in Kansas City. They placed it in Crown Center, it is an area downtown that lots of people visit and do festive things for the holidays. We were all really excited to go and see it and pick a few things to donate. We did a few of the festivities while we were there too. We walked through the train and light exhibit, ate lunch at Spin City Pizza together, and some of us window shopped while the rest of us went ice skating. We of course visited the giving machine and donated some chickens, an acre of sweet potatoes, some food, blankets, and a goat. The kids loved it!
The other weekends we volunteered at the Johnson County Christmas Bureau. We were supposed to be there for 4 hours but we were only there for about 30 minutes and they told us they were done for the night. We told the kids it still counts for service and we will volunteer again next year and hopefully have better luck. We made a lot treats and then delivered them to friends and neighbors the following weekend. We also tried to volunteer at Harvesters food bank but they changed their age requirement to a minimum 16 years.
Allison had two gymnastic meets within the past month. One was here in Olathe, the other was in Columbia Missouri. We drove there and back in one day. She didn’t say this but I think she loved having a travel meet that took the entire day like her brother has travel for baseball sometimes. She did great at both meets. Her best event was the beam at our home meet and the bars at the Columbia meet-she nailed her kip. She also added a few back hand springs to her floor routine and did great at those too.
We did a lot of puzzles this month too. Something about Christmas makes me want to put puzzles together. If it is a Christmas puzzle even better! Matthew was my most frequent helper but everyone joined me at some point for a bit. We would watch a Christmas show, or listen to Christmas music and drink some hot chocolate while we puzzled away.
Allison had a Christmas concert for orchestra. She did great. I had a hard time getting a picture of her because she was behind another kid but it was a well done concert and they sounded great. Her favorite part was going to dinner with Caylin afterwards.
