A busy week at the Holiday store

I think this has been the happiest holiday season ever for so many reasons. One, I haven't purchased one present yet and I love the simplicity that not worrying about commercial interests has given me. Several weeks ago as I was going through some difficult things and my sister Carol, whom I love, told me of a talk she loved and suggested I listen to. The talk was given by Terry Warner entitled "Honest, Simple, Solid and True". Oh my goodness it was beyond great....Chris and I have now listened to it 5 or more times each and talked endlessly about its principles. I have noticed that when Heavenly Father wants you to learn something you find it comes to you over and over again from different angles and in different forms. We have experienced this and I am so enjoying the learning process. In in addition to this talk we stumbled upon a blog of a young man who is biking across South America. He is an interesting person who has a compelling story to tell and he has captured our hearts, he has a post on December 11th entitled 11,000 km that really speaks to simplicity in life. ( http://www.thenomadlife.blogspot.com/ ) Ok I am really jumping all over the place and need to reign in my thoughts.

What I am trying to say is that I am so happy, I am happy because I have grown so much in the past year despite many hardships, happy because it is the Christmas season and I love the feelings, colors, lights and spirit of this season, and happy because I have a new perspective on life that gives me greater appreciation of the blessings I have. Another thing that has brought me great joy has been the thing that has absorbed my life for the past 2 weeks and that is the Holiday Store at the girls elementary school. I signed up to help, then got asked to help head it up and then ended up overseeing the whole thing with one other girl Stephanie. It has been sooooo much work. I fall into bed every night with my feet aching and worn out but it has been such a joy. For those of you who do not know what a holiday store is, we create a store in the school for all the kids to shop for Christmas for their families. We went out and shopped for, and set up a store in the school and that in itself was a major feat. The past 3 days have been shopping days for the kids. Here are the highlights,

1. The kids were all unanimous in their praise......"this is the best holiday store we have ever had". We were so happy that they were happy.

2. Helping all the kids shop for their families and seeing their excitement at finishing up and feeling that they were ready for Christmas and had done all their shopping.

3. Helping many many kids, who arrived with only 1 or 2 dollars pick out presents for their whole family and telling them that their 2 dollars was enough.....It makes me cry as I write it because we heard such excitement in their voices as they told eachother of all the things they had purchased and joy in their faces as they walked out with bags full of presents for their whole family that they wouldn't have been able to afford otherwise.

4. Laughing (inside of course) as one boy I was helping buy gifts said "well, the only thing I know is my grandma likes cigarettes......do you sell cigarettes here?" No sweetie we don't carry those....how about a nice picture frame......candle maybe?

5. Having Ava by my side every day helping me wrap the presents. All the kids just loved her and one day for lunch she sang for the whole 5th grade. They loved her so much that she came home with some presents to put under the tree that new found friends bought her at the holiday store.

Now I can begin to focus on my family and making it a fun Christmas for them. I will begin my own shopping and baking and try to remember the great lessons I learned from all those sweet kids.