Good deeds jar

I owe thanks to my friend Kristi for passing on the BEST holiday idea ever. I am always looking for ways to remind H and B about the amazing power of giving. The genius idea that she shared was to make a good deeds jar. So, on November 30th we sat down and each of them came up with 24 things they could do for someone else to make them smile. They each had their own mason jar that they decorated with pictures of Santa and every morning this month they ran to their jar to pull out a slip and find out what they got to do for the day. They called grandparents to say "I love you", cleaned out the dishwasher, did something nice for a friend at school, gave a compliment to someone , gave treats to neighbors and cleaned their room (to make mommy happy)......

Last night Anna came over to babysit while Jay and I went out for dinner with friends and we came home to a display of paper snowflakes that they worked on until they went to bed. We decided to make them even more fancy by taping the good deeds on the ends of the flakes. Only two good deeds left in the jars for tomorrow and then they will see if Santa takes a minute from his work tomorrow night to read their 48 slips of paper.

I just had to post this below pic for remembrance sake. Before school let our last week I joined some other moms and we helped the kids decorate gingerbread girls and boys. Moms brought all cookies and fixin's and the kids went to town. It was painfully obvious which kids don't have this fun candy at home.... i.e. our kids. They(Henry and Bryn) decorated their cookies with one goal.... to see how much candy they could smoosh onto the icing. The cookie became the vehicle to bring candy home, of course. They never ate the cookies once they got them home, but they did sneak every piece of candy off within a day or two! What have we done?