Operation Christmas Child: Donating Gifts To Children In Need.

*This goes on every year. Just google the exact dates for that year.*

There is still time to donate for the Christmas 2015 season but it's best to put this on the top of your To Do List since there is a small window of time to donate in order for the kids to receive the gifts by Christmas.

November 18-25 is National Collection Week at Samaritan's Purse. Chick-Fil-A has partnered with Operation Christmas Child and some of the locations (like Any Orange County locations in Southern California) have extended it and you can drop off shoeboxes filled with gifts until November 30, 2013.

Setting aside religious and/or political beliefs if they conflict with either of the companies involved, we need to think of the children who will ultimately be getting these gifts. When you give the gift of a Christmas present, 100% of what you give goes to a child. So when you send school books, a child in need will read them. When you send a soft, huggable stuffed lovie a child will feel safe and warm snuggling their gift at night. They don't care what you believe, they don't care if you don't even celebrate Christmas - they will just appreciate the love and the hope is that some of these children will be inspired to complete the circle of giving and in their own way pay it forward to give to others someday.

This is the reason to give right here. Give for the chance to fill these kids with pure joy and love.

Age category for shoeboxes: Boy or Girl: 2-4, 5-9, 10-14.

What to give: Start with a larger toy, such as a stuffed animal, car, or doll. Add toys, school supplies, and hygiene items. Do not include used items, war-related toys, chocolate or perishable foods, liquids, medicines, or breakable items. 

Here is the link from Samaritan's Purse about volunteering with them and/or making a donation of a Christmas box. They are asking to please send $7.00 to cover shipping costs for each box and if you donate that online you can follow where your box goes. You can also follow them on twitter.

Chick-Fil-A has teamed up with them and some of the locations are an official drop off location. They are even giving a coupon for a free sandwich for each filled box you bring in. If you don't eat there for whatever reason you can give your coupon away to someone who would love a free sandwich. Unfortunately, there are many homeless people in our world right now and if you drive a few blocks around your own house you will find someone to give your free sandwich coupon to.

The point is to give back, pay it forward and share the love.

Please join our family today in going to pick out gifts for children in need who, most likely, will not be receiving a ton of presents under a beautiful Christmas tree this year. We have a 5 year old and a 3 year old and we are letting them pick out their own box for a child who is their age and my husband and I will make gift boxes for the 10-14 age category. In the past when I have donated items to shelters and even when our family hosted a Pajama Drive a few years ago for the Pajama Program (a company who is near and dear to my heart) we learned in talking to the people working at the shelters, that many older kids get neglected during gift giving time because so many people want to help the babies and the small kids, which is wonderful don't get me wrong. However, we need to remember that older children and teenagers are in homeless shelters too, or in foster care and they need love too. Sometimes they need it more because they see more and know more.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  Please check back to my blog as I will be posting about our family donation to Operation Christmas Child this year.

Peace, Love & Light

Coco Cana

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Sibling Irony #3: Presents: Funny Kid Arguments. Toddler vs. Preschooler

My toddler is such an optimist. He's been walking around all day long saying, "it's almost Friday!"  Considering it was Monday, I didn't have the heart to correct him. Even though I don't think he even knows what "Monday" is.  So in typical toddler fashion - and if you know toddlers then you know what I'm talking about - he proceeded to spend the rest of the day telling everyone that it was, "almost Friday!"  And depending on how you look at it, he was right. It was almost Friday - in four days. Glass half full. I like that.

However, Big Sissy was growing tired of all of Baby Brother's "unnecessary" celebrating. Here's how it all went down. 

(SIDE NOTE: I'm trying to nip all of the excess fighting in the bud...but this particular argument was kinda funny so it was hard not to laugh while I was telling them to use their nice words with each other.) 

Baby Brother: “It's Almost Friday!”

Big Sissy: “No it isn't.”

Baby Brother: “Yes it is!”

Big Sissy: “No it ISN'T!”

Baby Brother: “Yes it IS, Sissy!”  ("Sissy" said with a tiny lisp, btw.)

(SIDE NOTE: Due to budgeting and time constraints I've edited the actual number of times this dialogue went back and forth. Once again if you know toddlers and preschoolers - especially those who are siblings - then you know what I'm talking about.) 

Baby Brother: “It's Almost Friday!”

Big Sissy: “Mooooooom, he keeps saying it's almost Friday!

Mom: (behind locked door) "Hey! Quiet down out there! I'm trying to watch last night's 15-hour re-cap episode of The Bachelor on TiVo and finish off these chocolate brownies before daddy eats them all and I can't hear myself think with all that yelling!" 

Juuuuust kiddiiiiiiing. 

You started to have some serious judgements going on though, didn'tcha? Come on admit it!  I saw your eyebrows raise up. We actually don't even have TiVo, so of course that's not true.

 Where were we?  Oh yea - back to the toddler vs. preschooler argument du jour...

"No it's not." 

"Yes it is."

Big Sissy: “He keeps saying it's almost Friday and it's not Friday!  It's January!"

Mama: (trying to muffle the laugh-cough into a bent elbow)"Well Birdie, Baby Brother doesn't really know what day it is. He's only 2 years old. He's just saying it's 'Friday' because he's heard us say that before and he's trying out new words so he can be a part of our conversation too. Today is actually Monday. So instead of yelling at him that he's wrong, let's try to teach our Baby Brother with our nice words that today is Monday but that Friday will be here soon.... OK, Love?"

Big Sissy: (to Baby Brother in the sassy voice reserved for 4 year olds who are trying to "school" their baby siblings) "It's not Friday, Bay. It's Monday.... AND it's January!"

Mom: (oh yea I forgot - mom brain) "Actually Birdie, it's February. Last month was January and this month is February. That's why we've been making our Valentine's Day cards for school because our Valentine's Day party is February 14th, remember? Next month it changes again and it will be March.... And we're using nice voices with each other, please. If not, then you will be choosing to have some time away from playing trains to cool off.

Baby Brother: (as if he's just invented bubblegum) “IT'S ALMOST FRIDAY!”

Big Sissy: (in her nicest, big girl 'teaching voice') "It's not Friday, Baby Brother (caressing his cheek to soften the blow of bad news) it's actually Monday - Feb-boo-r-air-y. January is over...(shakes head) It's gone, Bay Man. Gone forever. And Friday is in 8 days...OK Love?”

Baby Brother: (running the other way with his sword in the air) “Hey-evy-body! It's Almost Friday!”

Big Sissy: “MOOOOOOOOOOOM!”

Mom: (walks into the kitchen looking for pan of chocolate brownies - thinking of ordering TiVo.)

Are we there yet?  Why yes. Yes we are.

Happy almost Friday everyone!

Are you following @coco_cana on twitter yet? She doesn't really know how it works so it's kinda funny watching her flail around over there. Good for a laugh. 

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DIY Mama! Preschool Halloween Goodie Bags & Teachable Moments: Name Tags

My daughter's preschool is having a little Halloween party next week so we're making some goodie bags for all of the kids in her class. She goes three days a week so she'll actually be going to two Halloween parties at her school, so we decided to make bags for both parties. She only has about 8 kids in each class with a teacher and a helper (which is AWESOME!) We love her school and her teachers and feel very blessed to be there because she loves going to school. It took a while to find a good fit, but now we're finally in a preschool we all like and in one we feel works well with what our "preschool objectives" are.

She wanted to put each child's name on the bags so I was trying to think of something cute.  We ended up making name sticks together.  I made something similar to this for Valentine's Day with hearts that my daughter colored instead of rectangles and it came out pretty cute so we decided to try it for Halloween.

We're going to put them into the bag sticking out of the top with a ribbon tied around the top of the bag and the stick holding them in place.  (See Part 2 - avail soon.)


How To Make Name Sticks

What you'll need:

• Halloween Stickers (I found these cute ones with little costumed kids in the $1.00 bin at Target the other day.)
• Colored Construction Paper (Dollar Store) 
• Crafting Scissors ($1.00 bin at Target)
• Crafting Sticks/Popsicle Sticks (You can find these anywhere; the Dollar Store, Target, Michaels, etc. I actually got these from Starbucks. They are the coffee stir sticks. I have become friends with the girl who works there since it's Pumpkin Spice Latte Season and all, and I asked her if I could have a few of them for our craft. I like them because they are thinner than regular popsicle sticks and if you need to cut them, you can just use regular scissors and they cut in half very easily.)
• Tape
• Colored Markers
• A 4 year old to help you! 

How To Make Them & How To Involve Your Child As Much As Possible:

I used a pack of post-it notes to measure the size of my rectangular name tags making sure that the sticker of the Halloween Kid would fit before cutting them out.  After everything was measured and marked I cut them all out with my crafting scissors. Miss Preschooler chose to use orange paper for the girls and green paper for the boys. After I cut them out I marked along the edges with a colored marker to highlight the cute edge.

Teachable Moment:

• We talked about how a rectangle has 4 sides and that 2 of the sides are shorter and 2 sides are longer. Not like a square which has all 4 sides equal (or the same length.) 
• We also talked about the safe way to use scissors since she was getting all willy nilly with them! 
• We talked about what you can find in nature that is naturally orange and green. "Oranges, grass, leaves, butterflies and of course pumpkins and pumpkin vines."

I placed the sticker of the Halloween Kid and then wrote the names of each child in her class. Miss Preschooler added the accent stickers around the perimeter of the names.  Mama Preschooler may or may not have "repositioned" a few of the stickers if they were covering part of the child's name. Creative license.

I had her "read" each name to me and she got to choose who got which sticker as their Halloween Kid. These were very big decisions, let me tell you!  We decided that the Mummy Kid (pictured below) could go for either a boy or a girl, and she chose that sticker for her name stick.

Teachable Moment:

• We talked about what the perimeter was. "The path that surrounds an area."
• I spelled each name out loud as I wrote it and had her watch each letter. I made sure to write the letters the same way they teach the kids in school. However, I forgot I was doing that when I made the "Z" for Zander's name. I did the funky thing where you put the line through the middle - old habit from high school.  She was like, "Mommy, what is THAT?!" LOL!  I didn't change it because we ran out of Halloween Kid stickers or else I would have. Sorry Zander.
• As I wrote each name we talked about the first letter of the name and sounded it out. We also talked about what other words start with that letter. ("S", "Sssssss", "Su-Su-Summer. "S," "Sa-Sa-Sandwich" as she pointed to her sandwich.)
• We also talked about how even though the Witch sticker was a "girl" and the Frankenstein sticker was a "boy" that she could like any of them for her name tag. A boy could have the Witch and a girl could have Frankenstein and that it didn't matter to me what she wanted. We ended up putting "boy stickers" for boys and "girl stickers" for girls because I didn't want to possibly weird any of the parents out. I don't know if it would have, but you never know. And since the stickers were pretty gender specific, I just stuck with that. But in talking to my daughter about I said that girls and boys can like whatever they like regardless if it's "supposed" to be for a girl or a boy. I have to say that a part of me was pleased that she choose the Mummy for her name tag and not the Witch or the Pumpkin just because they were the "girl stickers." 

Then we taped each stick to the back with two pieces of tape, "just in case."  I took the tape off the dispenser and held the stick in place and my helper did, "the fun part" and stuck the tape to the stick. After a few she held the stick in place and taped it all by herself. (She insisted.) Mama however, was still the keeper of the tape. I know my audience and we didn't need THAT much tape! After the fact I thought I should write her name on the back so the kids will know who it's from. So please feel free to notice the sloppy writing. (See pic below.) The stick made me do it!

Teachable Moment:

I ran out of patience for a teachable moment on the tape. Lil Miss Persistent got a little too "wild" towards the end of our project, Baby Brother had just gotten up from his nap and I just wanted to wrap production before dinner so I was all like, "because I said so" about mama holding the tape.  Or something like that. Haha.

We're all done with our Halloween Goodie Bag Name Sticks and they turned out pretty cute!  Did you find Zander's yet? "Mommy, what is THAT?!"


Side Note
There were a few "Devil Girls" in the sticker pack too, but I decided not to use them. My daughter's preschool is affiliated with a Christian church and I thought that some of the parents and teachers might be offended with it, even though it is Halloween and it's a kid's sticker of a cute little girl dressed up in a Halloween costume. So I ended up making some sticks for our Trick-Or-Treat candy bowl for Halloween night.  I think they are pretty cute. I used to know a grandma who'd say, "Your horns are showing" whenever someone was being "naughty." Young or old she'd say that to you.  It was pretty funny.

What are your thoughts? Please share below!

1. Would the "Devil Girl" sticker bother you if your child was going to a Christian preschool?
2. Would you be offended if your boy got a name tag sticker of a "girl witch" even if you saw that there were "boy" stickers available?
3. Am I being overly PC and sensitive about the whole thing since these kids are only in preschool?

Have a fun, safe & Happy Halloween!

*heart*

Coco Cana

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