Paying it Forward

Monday was a rainy day. Not a wonderful thing when you have an active toddler. I wanted to be creative in trying to keep him busy and happy. Let's face it, being stuck inside with a 3 1/2 year old who is on week 4 of aspiring to be the Tasmanian devil is not a walk in the park. (If you think I am being unkind in my description of my child feel free to borrow him, please)

First we made more freeze pops from the blueberries we picked last week. Chase really likes doing things like this in the kitchen with me. We had made strawberry ones a few weeks back which were a big hit so I thought we would try blueberry.

That took all about 10 minutes. Now what were we going to do?!

I had already planned on him watching a movie after lunch for quiet time (otherwise known as mommy sanity time and work time). So I had to be creative. I came up with doing something that would make me happy, him happy, and even the community happy.

I told Chase we were gong through our cupboards and the things we weren't eating or have not been touched we were cleaning out. We would not throw them away though, we would collect them in one bag and donate them to the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf.

Chase may be young but I still like to try to teach him to be thankful and not take things for granted. I figure I better start now right?! He is a toddler and tends to be wasteful, especially when it comes to food. Lately we have been discussing (or I should say I have been preaching) that not everyone has the things we have. That we should be thankful that we have food because some people don't. I took this opportunity to go a step forward with involving Chase in paying it forward.

He was more than happy to help mommy. He gets into things like this (clearly my son)! I went through the cupboards and he put into the bag things that we could donate.

This morning we went to drop off the food. Chase was excited. He insisted on carrying the bag saying that the "people will be happy" because we gave them food.

Off to donate some food!

A rainy day activity turned out to be an act of goodness. Something which Chase may not understand now, but hopefully will remember some day. I want to be able to start doing this with him. I want him to know that we are fortunate and blessed. I want him to know we can't save the entire world and everyone in it, but we can try and do our part. Even the smallest of things can make another person happy.