My Favorites...

Ye Ru Hui b. Hubei, China
2003

I bombard my family with Christmas songs from Thanksgiving right on through Christmas. Most of my favorites are religious with the top two being "Oh Holy Night" and "Ave Maria". However, on the way to the post office tonight I heard the song "Feed the World" and I thought back to a few years ago and our Christmas in China. We are so very blessed, by our children, our extended family, our friends, our little furry friends and our health. So many others don't have this good fortune...

The girls have (I hope) been brought up in the spirit of giving. Every single year they adopt an "angel" from the angel tree in the mall and use part of their own money to buy presents for a child who would otherwise go without. Anna and Katie also take book bags , school supplies and old bikes to the Children's Home Society, which is the organization that we adopted them from all those years ago. This year Jia participated with them. I don't think she "gets it" yet, but in time she will.

The song in part goes...

"...and in our world of plenty
We can spread a smile of joy
throw your arms around the world
at Christmastime"

We are far from being in the position to give a lot, but even a very little means so much to some people. Even 10 dollars here and there....think about it. One less gift under our tree would provide for many.

Our favorite charities:

lovewithoutboundaries.com ...providing care and medical help for the orphans of China
halfthesky.org ....another very worthy organization that helps Chinese children
clintonfoundation.org ...provides low/no cost medicine for people living with AIDS in Africa
makeitrightnola.org ...providing help for survivors of Hurricane Katrina who still need so much and were outrageously neglected in their time of need.
chsfl.org ...The Childrens Home Society, an organization that gave us our precious A & K

I'll get off my soapbox now...but I'll be back!