Monday, November 24, 2008

Slumber Party and Saturday...

Last Friday, Jaiden's friend, Adi had a sleepover fo rher 5th birthday. This was Jaiden's first sleepover, and guess who stayed over with her?!

You guessed it! When we received the invitation, she was so excited, "Yes! A sleepover!!!! I can't wait!...Mom, will you stay too?" What she didn't know, was that Adi's mom had already asked me to stay over and help with the girls. I think she knew Jaiden well enough to know I would have been driving over in the middle of the night to pick her up when they all settled down to go to bed anyway! There were ten little girls that came to the party and Krissy's niece and another one of her friends also helped.

Here they are before things got really wild! :)

Jaiden and Catie showed up in matching pajamas so I took their picture.


J, Bryce, and the birthday girl...

The next morning Jaiden and I went to meet Mario & Jeryn at our church to process and pack shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child. He had a blast having his daddy all to himself, but he was really happy to see me and Jaiden when we walked in!


Our church is always a relay/collection center for Operation Christmas Child. This is the second year we have participated in this project, and it is so exciting and rewarding to me. I didn't have a full-time sitter for the kids last week so I got to spend two weekdays at the church and take the kids with me to help out. They had so much fun running around, and Jaiden loved being involved. She has been all about helping shop and pack the shoeboxes and when she walked in and got a glimpse of so many boxes stacked in rows, she was overwhelmed! I don't know what the final count was after church on Sunday when they loaded all the cartons onto the truck to take to Little Rock, but by the end of the day Wednesday, we had processed over 2,000 shoeboxes!

If you've never heard of the project, you can look up Operation Christmas Child or Samaritan's Purse online. There are SO many amazing stories that are so incredible and demonstrate God's hand in this entire project. One that I love is here. Our pastor's wife knows someone who went on one of the trips to hand out shoeboxes a couple of years ago. When it got down to the last shoebox, there were two little girls left and only one box. They weren't sure how they were going to handle it, but when they opened the shoebox, there were TWO OF EVERYTHING in the box!

Isn't our God amazing?!!

3 comments:

Jacquie said...

How great that J wanted you to be at her sleepover! It looks like those girls had big time.

We're a collection center for shoeboxes, too. Wow! 2000 boxes. Amazing.

This year we showed an OCC story about a girl who needed shoes... and that's what was in her box. So sweet. When I pack my boxes, I think about buying for my own kids and how I want to give to them... and then realize that this little box will mean SO much more to the child that receives it than my kids ever thought about!

Morris Family said...

How exciting to have a sleep over!! I think the Operation Christmas Child is so neat. I bet the kids did enjoy that tee-pee!!

Kelly said...

That mother is a BRAVE mother having a sleepover for that many 5 year olds. I loved slumber parties growing up but not sure if I will do it when Harper is 5 - yikes! Looks like they had a great time!
I know Flippin does OCC and mom always loves it!