Operation Christmas Child

I'd never participated in Operation Christmas Child before now, mostly because I never had a convenient location to drop off the boxes. This year though, St. Peter's was doing it and our family chose to make a box for each of certain members of our family, in lieu of gifts. I think this is far more important than giving someone a gift that they truly don't need. We are so very, very fortunate, I feel we really need to help those who aren't. This is just one very small way, but I figured we can do more each year to slowly change the way many of us feel about Christmas. Now, let me state here that we always, always do donations of many different sorts at Christmas and throughout the year, this was just the first year we have done this one.

Addie didn't help me put the boxes together too much, but she did enjoy putting them under the Christmas tree at church:

I love it - she's putting presents under a Christmas tree in a turkey dress!

While we were waiting on my dad to bring the car around (because we had SO many boxes to donate - yay!), Addie found it fun to try to push the button for the "alligator," known to the rest of the world as an "elevator!" Until she actually did push the button and the elevator started to move - then she freaked out!

Pushing the button for it...

then running from it - ha! My girl HATES loud noises of every single kind!