Christmas is for Giving

We took the boys Christmas shopping a few weeks before Christmas so they could help us pick out gifts for 2 young men who we were helping provide Christmas for through the Angel Tree at Cayden's school.  We went to St. George so of course that meant we had to eat somewhere yummy-Texas Roadhouse!  We always order way too much food and we eat way too much.  Don and I always forget that we should just order one entree and share it and we only remember after we have ordered and eaten the appetizers and are stuffed and still waiting for our main course.  We ordered fried pickles this time which was a first for me and I decided that I didn't like them at all.  Kyle on the other hand loved them and consequently didn't eat his dinner when it came because he ate lots of pickles and cheese fries.  After dinner we spent a considerable amount of time in Walmart walking up and down the aisles trying to decide what to get to 17 year old boys that we knew nothing about.  We ended up getting them each a basketball, a blanket, a leatherman and some pj's and a sweatshirt.  We also put in some gift cards to McDonalds.  My boys were very helpful in picking out stuff and also telling me "no way" on other things.  Caleb also bought them some candy with his own money.  We had to of course go to Swig on the way home.

This is Kyle driving his sleigh/cart in Walmart.

The other things we did to help others for Christmas was while we were in Utah at Thanksgiving.  Suzanna and I had talked about what we wanted to do with our families literally the night before we found this idea and I know that it was just a complete tender mercy and inspiration from Heavenly Father.  That morning I was reading the paper on the kitchen counter while getting breakfast and I saw this story about patients at the state mental hospital and a program that they did every year called "The Forgotten Patient".  Oh my gosh!  Talk about a sad situation!  There are people at the hospital of all ages who would not get a Christmas of any kind unless this program was available.  There was a contact email for the director and after calling Suzanna to tell her what I had found I emailed the lady and even called her phone number to leave a message because we really wanted to participate.  I was quite surprised when she emailed me back that afternoon and we called all the family members and decided how we were going to help.  We were given 2 people to buy for a 14 year old young man and a 35 year old man.  We did our shopping before we left Provo so that we didn't have to ship stuff.  We bought and filled a stocking for the young man. Caleb bought him the monster truck. The teenager seemed like he had a much younger mental age so he was easy to buy for.

  Aunt Suzanna and grandma Penny wrapped all the gifts and delivered them to the hospital. We were so glad that we could participate in this program and we look forward to helping again next year. 

We also helped a single father and his son here in our valley who were new and basically had nothing. We got them a grocery gift card and sent them a bunch of fruit. There were several people who helped this family have a nice Christmas.