Joy of giving - update 2

Woot.  It's Christmas time.  I love the holidays.  Truly love them.  This giving project is just one of my favorite things this year.  It's not as huge and mind blowing as perhaps my imagination had intended at the start but by keeping it relaxed and doing it out of a genuinely giving heart rather than a sense of obligation has made it such a blessing to me.  So this week we didn't do much throughout the week.  I had a sick baby girl for most of the week and during the week KOJ isn't here to help corral grabby hands and what not, so it's harder to get things done.  I did have the kids make a Christmas card for a special person they wanted to give treats to.  Kayd wanted to give treats to his baseball coach (who also happens to be a friend from church lol) and I prompted Colton and Sawyer to consider giving treats to their awana teacher because she's amazing.  They jumped right on that.  Colton even wrote the note in the card he made for her.  I can't believe I didn't think to take a picture of it!  Grr.  So on Wednesday we took two of our treat bags that we'd made up with the Christmas button candies and the cards they'd made and put them in the proper church mailboxes.  The boys were so excited.  It is so fun to watch them want to give and get joy out of it.  Kayd came to me about giving a treat to his coach and I'm so blessed that he was even thinking about it.

But yesterday we made a few more treats to put together a somewhat larger goody bag for the three pastors of our church.  Not only are they pastors but they are all dear friends.  So I really wanted to do it up right for them.  So we made chocolate dipped marshmallows to add to the Christmas buttons.

Very fun, very easy, very yummy, very pretty.  It's really a win, win, win, win treat.  And it was another winner for involving the children.

Later after watching Rudolph we made homemade hot cocoa mix and again because all the ingredients were dry it really was also another great one for including the kids, I helped them measure everything out and the dumped it in the huge bowl.  I used a funnel and some fancy baggies we bought for Sierra's birthday party but couldn't use due to shape issues to baggy up two servings (in each bag).  Whichever children were still at the table and not in the bath got to put mini marshmallows in on top.  I tied them with holiday ribbon and they turned out cute.

Then the kids helped me put all three treats together into gift bags and now we'll take them with us to church today.

Next week on the giving list I plan to make potato fudge for my mom and grandma.  It's something that my great grandmother used to make once a year at Christmas and my mom always wanted to hog the whole box for herself.  I also plan to make this toffee to give to one more family at church that Kayd picked out, the mail person, and my other grandma.  KOJ is planning to take Friday off from work and I'm hoping to go as a family to visit both of my grandmas.  I'm very excited about the whole thing.