Giving back

I finally got in touch with the lady from the food pantry that I have been calling for over a week now. I cleaned out my pantry a few weeks ago and realized I have a lot of food to give away. nothing expired but just no longer eaten by our family, so I packed 2 bags full and looked up on line for a place to donate it to. I found one about 10 blocks from here and after talking with her for 25 minutes this morning, she was very nice, we will be donating our contribution this week.

I also looked up the addresses for the annual NYC coat drive coming up in December and the kids and I went trhu their old coats as well as mine and found that we each have at least 1 coat that can be donated. The only one that doesn't is J, all her stuff goes to A. The kids like to go through their things periodically and see what we can give to other kids who don't have as much as we do. I think it helps them to realize all the blessings that we do have. It feels nice to be able to give....the lady from the food pantry said that last year they gave out food to about 17,000 people. I am sure that some of them were repeat customers, but it's still a lot of people. I think we as a society are used to having so much stuff.... and honestly that's not what should matter in life. Yes we all should have enough to be happy with, enough food to eat, weather appropriate clothes, books, toys etc.. but I think a lot of ppl over do it.
My kids for instance do not need tons of Christmas presents, b day presents, they need loving family around them who hug them and just love them for who they are.

They need opportunities to learn and to be able to pursue doing what they love and enjoy. Our money goes to mostly these things for the kids.

They are being educated in the environment and what is good for the earth, the animals and people. They will be adults one day and I want to raise responsible ones, to themselves, to society and to our planet.

The kids have been doing school work, going to dance class, the library, helping around the house, (for allowance) helping with errands, playing with their toys. One things I have noticed since we cut down our cable to only basic cable service a few weeks ago, is that they have been playing a lot with their board games. Last week me and F played his 10 days across the USA 3 times in 1 day, his 20 questions from science a few times, A's Lady bug game a few times, as well as other games. They really are enjoying themselves more, reading, drawing more (if that's even possible). They were already hardly watching TV, a few DVDs here and there and the like, but now they are doing that even less.

F has discovered a web site for kids dedicated to ship wrecks from around the world and he sat down at the computer a few days ago and wrote out the ship's names, location, year they sank, country they were from and other information about them on a few pieces of paper. Some of the places were familiar, but too familiar so he looked them up... what impressed me the most was that he choose to write! He doesn't like to write and he did this all on his own and wrote 2 pages worth of information : ).
He is also doing 4Th grade math problems as far as addition, subtraction and multiplication, 107 x 203, which at first was met with some fear and whining, which is his response to seeing something 'hard' that he is asked to do, and then after he gets reassured that he just has to try to do it, he ends up doing it and after about 1day of trying it, gets it by himself with no more plms. They only things that is still giving him problems are fractions, which were my math weakness in school as well. One good thing about home schooling is that we can work on it as much as we need to over time and I know he will get it.