Service, Please

Jack, with our food drive haul

There is nothing like Christmas to make you want to bite off more than you can chew. So, this December I decided I'd try to do one service project each week with the boys. We did manage to get one done the first week. I wanted to take goodies to the neighbors (but I was a little embarrassed to do it so early), and I also wanted to help Tal collect canned food for the cub scout food drive. Tal came up with the idea to trade "cookies for cans." I thought that was a brilliant idea. So we made up about 7 plates of cookies and took them to friends in our neighborhood and Joey and Katie's neighborhood. It was great fun to visit our friend's homes and the boys got to see how generous people can be.
After that our December got extra crazy with birthdays on the 9th and 10th, the Hale family calendar project and visits to Tal, Cole and Jack's classrooms. So, I decided it made more sense to do it when the kids got out of school and we needed to keep them busy anyway. So our first holiday Monday I took the boys to the store and they helped pick out treats and gifts for a soldier care package to send to Clint's old squadron in Iraq. I knew it'd be late, so I planned it to be a New Year's Package. The nice thing about gifts is that late is always better than never. I told the boys as we got out of the car that they'd be writing thank you cards to go in the package. Cole said, "Mom, that's embarrassing." I said, "What do you mean?" Cole said, "I don't want to do that in the store!" I explained we'd be doing it later, at home. The boys did o.k. in the store although they kept wanting the toys and candy to be for themselves. I kept reminding them that we were supposed to be thinking about the soldiers who were away from their families at Christmas, not about ourselves. We went home and as I was loading the items into the box I noticed Cole take a tightly folded piece of paper and slip it into the box, like he didn't want me to see. I remembered he'd said this kind of thing is embarrassing. I took the box in my room to read the note. I was so curious. It said, "If you don't like anything in this box, send it back." Ha! Later we did write some actual thank you notes and I explained to them about 9/11 and what the soldiers were doing over there to defeat Al Queda. Talmage wrote on his note, "Give the enemy a knuckle sandwich from Clint Cresap's son."
I wanted to take the boys to a rest home to sing carols but eliminated that idea because of 1) lack of time 2) the boys don't sing Christmas Carols and 3) the boys would probably run around and touch people's things and stress the old folks out. Discretion being the better part of valor, we passed. We'll do it later, maybe with one boy at a time.
So finally, we whipped up more cookies (since my hips need frequent injections of my favorite mint chocolate cookie recipe) and took them to more friends and neighbors. And we took one plate and a loaf of pumpkin bread to the fire station. I expected to see a table of goodies, but there wasn't a thing. Just a dozen fit and bored firemen looking very excited to see treats. They were so grateful and thanked Talmage and Jack so enthusiastically I was really taken aback. Talmage and Jack were really impressed that they'd done something nice. Have you ever observed that a grateful recipient often does far greater good than any service offered?
I'm glad this Christmas season got the ball rolling for us in the service department. I'm hoping to do projects on a monthly basis this year. But I'm really low on non-holiday service ideas. Could you share any ideas you have for service projects?