The Reason for the Season

 Yesterday was a perfect day.  Lesley and I did a lot of damage at The Children’s Place and Old Navy, finding great deals on great clothes for 5 boys who we believe will really appreciate having some new clothes, and even some choices…like do I want to wear the black jeans or the blue ones?…with sneakers or shoes?  Thanks to Suzanne, the Manager at The Children’s Place, who was sweet, warm, helpful and even saved us some money.  Les and I  were on the exact same page picking out clothes and after a great lunch (thanks, Les) at Falafel Bistro we sat ourselves down on her bedroom floor and sorted and bagged up 5 big bundles for Richard to get to the soup kitchen in plenty of time to make Christmas a little brighter.

I purposely did NOT fuss with cooking and baking for Vegan Feast Thursday, as I wanted the “kids” to know how my day was spent and how very fortunate they are even though they all struggle (as most are) with the economy as they juggle work, school, paying bills, etc.  I bought some Tofurky cold-cuts, bread and picked an assortment of lettuce from the garden to go on their sandwiches.  Thankfully I had already made a pot of hearty bean and pasta soup as Michele, Pete, Veronica, Aldo and Dave all joined us.   Michele is just back from her last animal rescue mission in Virginia, which she declared a success.  Derek and Pete shared their fall semester’s grades, all As and Bs.  Great job guys!  Veronica baked and brought me the yummiest smelling candle.  Pete and Michele got the whole table cleaned off.  Thanks, all.  I love these “kids.”  I love that they gather every week at our house and I love that we get to feed them.

The outlook on hunger was reported in the newspaper this morning, and it’s definitely NOT good.  More people are expected to be hungry in 2012 than already are.   Some days, when I wake up and spammers have hit this website in full force, and I am busy deleting comments about everything from where to buy Uggs and Cialis to how to make money doing anything and everything, I wonder why I am even blogging.  Yesterday, I learned that my entry about the soup kitchen was shared by many and offers of donations started coming in.  If all these months and years of rambling leads to some full bellies, I can stop questioning.

On a totally lighter note, if you want to get your kids to eat more veggies,  studies show that rewarding your children with stickers after they take bites of their vegetables, actually leads to them liking them more and hence eating more.  Stickers…hummm…seems so easy.  Get those favorite stickers and keep some in the kitchen.  We really are smarter than our kids 🙂

Thanks, also, to Carol for that great email reminding yourself of all you are grateful for.  I loved that and it worked into my day just perfectly.  So did seeing one of my own fairy godmothers, Jill, at Publix.  When I met her almost 29 years ago, and was pregnant with Derek, she gave me ALL her hand-me-down maternity clothes, which was an insane gift for me at that very broke time in mine and Mitch’s lives.   My mom was the nursery lady at the gym I taught at and Jill attended.  My mom took extra special care of Jill’s boys.   She has continued to pop in and out of my life at the most appropriate times and we ALWAYS pick up the conversation as if we had seen each other yesterday.  It was meant to be that we bump into each other yesterday and have the chance to catch up and wish each other good holiday cheer.   Just the icing on my cake (vegan, of course) like day.

Wishing you a sweet day filled with love, gratitude and of course a little peaceandfitness.