Angels.

I love December and the true spirit of Christmas. 
Its the time of year where your family, friends, neighbors, or even complete strangers act as angels in your life. 

We have been blessed two years in a row now by acts of kindness around Christmas.
Last year a giant bag of presents was left for us. We were so very grateful for them and that we were able to give Emery a good Christmas last year. We enjoyed the gifts given to us as well. We didn't have much last year and it was so touching when we received it. We were so thankful for it and for the love we received.  
This year a very generous card and a present for Emery were left for us. The present was a giant Mickey Mouse, which Emery LOVES! She has loved Mickey Mouse this year so she was so excited when she opened it on Christmas! 
I can not express what this meant to us. Caleb and I both teared up and we're so very grateful for whoever sent it our way. It drove me nuts that we didn't know who it came from. I wanted to personally thank them!! But it is people like both of those that have helped us out that I want to be like.
I want to be the one on the giving end. I can not wait until we have the means to be able to do that. But until then I want to help people out in ways that I can right now. 

I want to raise my kids to know how good it feels to give. And to make christmas more about giving than about all the presents. 
We are so blessed to have all the people in our lives that we have. People never cease to amaze me. 
I am so grateful!!! 
Especially for all that I have and those that are in my life. We are so very blessed!

Calebs dad and mom asked for such an amazing gift this year. Their only wish was for a white envelope in the tree on Christmas from each of us. This white envelope is a note to them telling them what service you have done for other people. They asked us to participate and it really helped us get into the holiday spirit and we loved looking for service to do for other people. They got the idea of the white envelope from a story they heard about a wife who would give one to her husband every Christmas instead of buying him random things he really didn't need. It started with her telling him she bought a poor high school wrestling team new gear and every year after that she would do different things. I loved the story and idea of the white envelooe. I feel like people try too hard to get the perfect gift and often times it's soo stressful!

The white envelope idea can be as cheap or expensive as you make it. Caleb's parents didn't want us to go out and spend a ton of money helping people out, unless we had the means to and wanted to, but they just wanted us to do more service. 

We were able to donate to a few places and it was such a nice feeling knowing that we were helping people out. We also gave money to those in need and did random acts of kindness. We looked for opportunities in which we could help and happily offered our help and it was so great! 

Even though Christmas is over that doesn't mean the service stops.  I hope to continue to do things throughout the whole year and raise Emery and our children to know and do service as well. 

We have so many amazing examples in our life who do this and often without even really thinking about it and makes me want to be so much better! 
I look forward to being an angel in other people's lives. :)