Today’s kindness advent was leaving a treat for our trash guy.  He comes bright and early every Tuesday morning so last night we did our prep work.  I want this advent to always be something our kids participate in because I do think it helps cultivate a spirit of thankfulness and kindness during a season which can easily focus on our own personal wants.  I never want our kids to shy away from kindness.  Every morning as we drive to school I pray out loud over their day and always ask God to show them opportunities for kindness.

So they each colored and wrote a thank you note to our trash man.  The boys needed help with all their spelling, but chose their own words.  I want them to take ownership over their kindness.

This morning I ran our little package of goodies out to our trash can and placed it on top.

Year after year, this kindness act always makes our list and we always sit and wait with crossed fingers and toes that he sees the package before dumping it into his truck.  This little window gets fuller and fuller each year as their little bodies get bigger and bigger.

Hudson was mid getting dressed when he heard the trash truck coming.  This is serious anticipation.

Tomorrow we are giving coffee and donuts to our car rider line staff.  Everyday the exact same staff is outside working the car rider line…no matter the weather.  They’re crazy awesome!

Hope your week is off to a great start.  Hope you are spreading a little kindness in your own way.

Happy Tuesday!

Today for our kindness advent we bought up lots of toiletries to stuff stockings for some sweet young adults.  We love being a part of the extension of foster care here in Tennessee which assists really amazing 18-21 year olds.

Tomorrow we are leaving treats for our trash guy.  Cookies, thank you notes and a Starbucks card because he’s awesome!

A few random things:

*You know how there are always those few random lonely bananas in the banana produce area at the grocery store???  The ones that have either fallen off or someone has pulled off because they wanted a smaller number of bananas.  If I see them, I have to buy them.  It’s a serious problem.  I don’t know why…they just kind of call to me.  “Take me home Laura.”  “I’m a lonely banana.”  So I do.  And then Amon eats them.  He eats approximately 37 bananas a week.

And before I get asked, why yes, yes we do have rabbit ears for our t.v.

*I have received a hilarious amount of emails and comments about my house slippers…the ones I turned into outside the house house shoes.  My friends Eric and Chelsea gave them to me when Josh was in Nepal and Amon was puking his guts out.  Anyways, I saw Chelsea last night and she said she got them at Target.  Now everyone go forth and purchase a pair.

*Have you heard of Dressember?  Well it’s awesome.  Click on the link and watch the video.  I absolutely love this quote:

“Don’t ever underestimate the importance you can have, because history has shown us that courage can be contagious and hope can take on a life of its own.” -Michelle Obama

  Women are raising money for the International Justice Mission this year.  It simply makes my heart want to burst and my friend Jessica is going after 10K for the IJM.  She’s over half way there and we can help her reach this goal and further the incredible work the IJM is doing.  Head over to Jessica’s PAGE and donate today!

*Josh Kelley snapped these while I was away and it made me want to melt into a big drippy puddle.  One of Hudson’s chores is taking out the trash and recyclables and Solomon offered to help him.  I love being their mom.  It’s a total honor.

 *Today is the last day to place an order to ensure your order arrives by Christmas because I’m a tad slammed.  You can still place orders after today, but I just can’t guarentee them by Christmas if they are gifts.  Email me at pitterpatterart at gmail dot com if you have any questions.

*And Amon and I are both getting a crown on a tooth this month.  A) My teeth totally went to crap after having Harper.  I had impeccable teeth for 25 years.  Alas.  B) Poor Amon has an undeveloped 2 year molar and that sucker is hurting him something awful.  It’s the weirdest looking thing too.  So his dentist is putting a crown on it because it has zero enamel and he won’t lose it until around age 12.  They won’t sedate him and he’s totally going to scream his head off so they scheduled us for super early in the morning while no one else is there.  This cracked me up.  Kid dentist’s surely will have extra jewels in their crowns.

Now I’m off to work like crazy.  And I might fix myself a little sea salt caramel hot chocolate because hey, it’s Monday!

Yesterday was Ashley’s birthday so we were kind of busy doing birthday things like going into Ulta only to emerge 3 hours and 42 minutes later.  It’s what we do.  So I never got around to my post for yesterday.  It’s cool.  I’m letting my OCD hair blow in the wind.  Although I fought the urge to bust out my computer at a little before midnight and still make it happen.  Geesh.

Saturday’s kindness advent was buying someone’s lunch.  Josh Kelley continued on in true kindness fashion while I was away.  He sent me this little gem of the kids waiting in the Arby’s drive-thru for someone to pull in behind them so they could get lunch and surprise the stranger behind them as well.

After further review of this picture at first I thought I just loved Solomon’s squirrely little face he’s making. Buuuuut, then I realized I loved even more that Hudson is missing his shoe and low and behold it is on Sol’s hand.  This is them.  All the time.  God bless their little strange hearts.  And doesn’t Amon look like he’s going to fall sleep mid camera snap?!?!?!

Today we are delivering a recipe with all the ingredients.  I love this one because I hate figuring out what’s for dinner.  I would love for this to happen to me Monday-Friday for the rest of my life….I’ll handle Saturdays and Sundays.

I’m going with this super yummy and delicious and easy 5 Ingredient White Chicken Chili…plus cheese and corn chips.  Yeah!

And tomorrow we are buying toiletries for our extension of foster care Christmas party.  Locals:  Did you know Tennessee has an extension of foster care for 18-21 year olds who age out of the system?  It’s amazing.  Josh Kelley and I learned all about it during our foster care training and just fell head over heels for the department and the kids involved.  There are so many ways you can be involved from mentoring (which I love) to helping out with events and parties they throw for the young adults.  Our family will be rocking out at their Christmas party this year on Christmas day.  Cannot wait.

 And now I need to get to the grocery store asap and gather up all our food for the week plus our recipe ingredients.  I loved having a little weekend getaway, but nothing beats home.

Happy Sunday!

Yesterday we kicked off our 4th Annual Kindness Advent…I’m making it all profesh sounding with the 4th Annual part…and the capital letters.  First up was filling those wondrous gum and candy and trinket and ginormous bouncy ball machines when you’re leaving the stores.  My kids LOVE these and we rarely stop to do them, but when we do it’s like gold.  Needless to say they loved filling them all up for other kids to find.  And Harper left notes to lure people in.

Today we’re rocking handmade bookmarks in the books at the library.  They crafted their little hearts out last night.  Glue, hole punchers, scissors, stickers, ribbon, embellishments, paper cutters, sharpies, the crafty list could go on and on.  I didn’t buy anything…just pulled out a bunch of random supplies and let them go to town.

Amon was fully distracted by trying to hole punch a little plastic bag of heart stickers open and then when he realized it was never going to work he moved on to the scissors.  He’s still learning how to cut so this was great practice time and kept him busy.

Tomorrow we are delivering flowers to someone who could use a little pick-me-up.

In businessy news, I’ve been a working fool lately.  Lots of key fobs and name pillows heading out and today I’m starting canvas orders.  So crazy thankful for each and every order.

Also, I’m having issues again with my contact form, so if you’ve sent me a message and I have not replied it is because I did not receive your email.  It may take me a few days…4 children + life + wild inbox…but I always respond to messages…unless I don’t get them or they went to my spam box.  So if you are interested in Items Currently Available…I still have 2 canvases and some Christmas buntings left…or you want to place an order, shoot me an email at pitterpatterart at gmail dot com

That’s all I’ve got for today.  See you tomorrow and hope your Tuesday is awesome!

So how was your Thanksgiving holiday?  I hope it was just the little break you needed.  Our’s was good and fun and full.  We got in a lot of family time together and I actually got a lot of work done as well.  We ate lots of yummy food.  I put disclaimer notes on my chess pies.  One did not get touched at all…disclaimer note for the win.  The other had a few tiny pity slices taken out of it, but I took that one back home with me and shamefully ate the rest of the entire pie.  See, I just love chess pie…even when it has a weird texture and has been cooked for 5 bajillion minutes and still isn’t completely solid…I have zero shame people…the whole pie…gone…poof…like magic…except in my stomach…and I’m wearing it proudly around my muffin top now.  Sigh.

I also may have worn the exact same pair of slouchy gray sweatpants for 3 days in a row.  To stores.  And sometimes with my house shoes which I turned into out-of-the-house-house-shoes.  I decided after 3 days of wear and ummmm, only one shower in that mix that the pants needed washing…so I could wear them again today.  I may have a problem.

We watched lots of football.  The boys are glued.  Especially Amon.  This picture makes me want to snatch him up and kiss that cute little profile and those dangling feet.

We worked puzzles and played games.  We like the big 500+ piece puzzles for holidays…the ones that take all day to complete.  And Hudson, Solomon and I declared last minute Pictionary victory over Harper and Josh Kelley.  It was intense.  Josh even started hiding his drawings because I may have had wandering eyes sometimes when trying to figure out drawings like ‘cement mixer’.

Hudson had a severe asthma attack and ended his Thanksgiving night like this.

He totally crashed…mid breathing treatment.  He plays hard and cats are his arch nemesis.

I got in lots of work over the holiday.  Love crossing orders off my list and getting things packaged up ready to hit the mail.

And we also got our Kindness Advent up and ready to go.  This is something we started in 2011 after Mom died.  I really wanted something to keep us focussed on others during a really hard time for our family and this was it.  You can read about 2011 HERE, 2012 HERE and 2013 HERE.  It’s something we love more and more each year.

I will try and post each day about what we are doing and about what the following day’s event will be.  For our full month’s list GO HERE.  This is seriously one of my most favorite times of the year for this very simple reason.  Today we are starting with filling gum/trinket machines with quarters.  The Kelley kids LOVE this one.  So simple.  So fun.

Tomorrow we will be leaving bookmarks in books at the library.

I hope you’ll join in on the fun with us.  Do one every day or every week.  Skip around.  Make up your own.  You can’t mess it up…kindness is kindness and it totally matters.

Hope you enjoyed your holiday time.  Now bring on December.  I have a feeling it’s going to be good!

Happy Monday.