End of Year Review: 12 Months of Kindness

It was our 10th year of committing to a year's worth of giving kindness out to others. We put our list together at the beginning of the year, as usual, and attempted to make it more kid friendly and manageable with four kids; two of which had extracurricular seasons to contend with.

12 Months of Kindness 2018
January: sign up to run Dad's team's concession stand
February: surprise snail mail for Valentine's Day to our cousins
March: volunteer at our church fish fry
April: Help at the Johnstown Backpack Project
May: Studer scholarship and give a special thank you to our teachers and bus driver
June: visit the humane society and give a donation
July: 10th (and last!) annual Studer's Invitational
August: surprise our local librarians with a tasty treat
September: Host a big grandparent dinner for Grandparent's day
October: throw an end-of-season football/cheerleading party at our house
November: surprise a family member with groceries
December: deliver cookies and notes to our neighbors

We did some other very small kind things sprinkled throughout the year too. Things that were never on any list, but that presented themselves in moments that we had the opportunity to choose kindness and help the kids choose to do the right and kind thing too -

• deliver cookies and muffins to our bus driver who is so patient with us
• leave cookies & muffins in the mailbox for our mail carrier Karen sporadically
• share our chicken eggs with neighbors, family, friends, and the Home Ec class at my school
• support my students' extracurricular activities by purchasing things from their fundraisers
• take extra money for any other student who forgot on special days (tattoo/face painting)
• attend a memorial paper lantern service for Daddy's basketball players aunt
• attend a memorial balloon release meeting for a former soccer teammate
• Greyson started altar serving at church
• donating to fundraisers in tragic moments for family, friends, and community members
• packing up and sending off clothes too small for Rusty to a family friend with a littler dude than ours
• making dinner for families with new babies

But as is obvious, we experienced a disruption in our lives this summer - the sort that knocks you off your normal path and plans. We got side tracked and distracted and dropped the ball on many things that we wanted to accomplish or do - not only on the kindness front, but on all fronts. 

but then, you know what we got to experience

the most incredible year of kindness received

I cannot possibly express in words the amount of gratitude that we feel from the love and support and kindness we were blanketed with over the course of this year, specifically in the last six months. It is staggering and overwhelming and feels so undeserved. 

• snail mail letters of love and encouragement
• dinners delivered to us and to our family members
• so many prayers and good wishes sent our way
• an entire book series sent for me and my students
• a classroom fairy godmother who sends a surprise each month to my students' and i
• free shipping from an etsy seller who made me something special and custom
• so many open arms for my babies when we needed a babysitter last minute
• calls and texts from friends who have more expertise than us
• calls and texts from friends and family just to say hi and check in
• patience and grace with us: for our lateness, our last minute change of plans, our forgetfulness
• giving space and respect to our privacy

We have a lot of kindness to make up for in the next year, but what an incredible gift it has been to be on the receiving end of so much generous kindness this year.

truly, a reminder of how important small acts of kindness are - how one small kind gesture can transform a lonely or difficult day into one that does not feel so scary or alone. 

we will never be able to thank you all enough. Even if it was a random moment in which you thought of our family and sent a tiny well wish into the universe - we felt that. thank you. 

we move into 2019 with a renewed sense of commitment to sending love and kindness into the world. 

with all our hearts.

'Because I have been given much
I too, must give' 

home and parents

I have a bunch of blog posts in as drafts and I have wanted to get them finished and posted, but my moral compass feels too dishonest to post anything about our sugarcoated bubble life when my mind and heart has been so distracted by what is happening on the border.

I sat down with my two big kids yesterday, to just talk through things that are happening. I do this often as I care about giving them a wider lens of the world. They are so vastly blessed in so many ways and I hope and strive to raise them up to use their voices for those who have none.

Here were our conversations:

Gemma, 6
Mum: what's the worst thing that's ever happened to you so far?
Gem: um, nothing. No bad things really happen.

Mum: what's the worst thing that could ever happen to you?
Gem: not being with you and Dad. you guys getting dead.

Mum: what do you think could be a reason that me and Dad would ever say, we have to leave our house right now and run away?
Gem: you would never say that

Mum: but let's pretend that we did say that. Why do you think me and Dad would ever take you guys away from our home and go far away?
Gem: maybe because something bad was happening here. Like bad guys?

Greyson, 8
Mum: what's the worst thing that's ever happened to you so far?
Grey: being embarrassed

Mum: like when have you ever been embarrassed!?
Grey: at the championship game yesterday!

Mum: What?! I didn't see anything embarrassing!
Grey: (through fits of giggling) They walked the batter and the guy on first started to run to second and I screamed 'He's going!' and the kid was like, "Dude, it's a walk you can't get me out"

Mum: (laughing) did anyone on your team hear you?
Grey: (hysterically laughing) yea! I screamed it

Mum: okay, let's call Dad quick and tell him that because he will have a brighter day, that is FUNNY, Grey, not embarassing!

--call Dad ---

Mum: okay, questions again - what's the worst thing that could ever happen to you?
Grey: You or Dad dying.

Mum: what do you think could be a reason that me and Dad would ever say, we have to leave our house right now and run away?
Grey: our house burns down? you can't live in ashes

Mum: Okay, any other reason?
Grey: um, someone is trying to kill us? and the first place they'd look for us is in our house?


After the questions with each (during which they sit on or close to my lap while I look them in the face), I told them a little bit about why I was asking those questions.

Mum: I asked you those questions because right now, families are running away from home and going to a place they think will be safe for their kids. The place they think is safe, is here, The United States, but when they get here, they are getting in trouble because they didn't ask to come first.
Grey: why didn't they ask first?

Mum: well, there could be a lot of reasons, if you think of running away, usually it's quick and you don't have time to really do anything.  And most times, it takes a long time to get permission, there's a lot of paperwork and forms and a waiting list. And when you're in danger- or you think your kids are in danger - you can't wait for anything, you just have to go. So what do you think should happen when you get to the safe place even if you didn't ask to come?
Gem: they should help you
Grey: you should say why you came and then they say okay but you have to do the papers still but in the safe place

Mum: well, what is happening right now is that the Mom and Dad are going to jail because they didn't ask and since the kids can't go to jail, they are going to a different building. So they get separated from their parents

Looking at the picture of the centers (while I try to stay quiet and just let them sort through their own questions)
Grey: why are they in cages though?
Gem: what are those blankets?
Grey: do they still get to play? do they get to go to school?
Gem: will they get their moms and dads back?
Grey: how long do they have to stay?
Gem: is the bad thing still at their house? Can they just go back home again with their moms and dads?

I showed them the (now well known) picture of that baby girl crying and told them,
Mum: it says she's two
Gem: Rusty is two.
Grey: she has to go to the cage too?
Gem: I would take care of the babies, momma. and then I would break out of there and come save you and Dad.

After our chats, we spent some time doing read alouds with the babies and then played a fun Mommy-monster game which always leaves them squealing and shrieking in giggles. We had a normal summer day in our safe home in which I could choose to distance myself from facebook and the news and go about my day because it's not happening to me and my children.

because that is privilege. to be able to ever say, 'that difficult thing is not happening to me, so I don't have to think about it.'

And 'difficult thing' could be so much: a sick child, a lost loved one, addiction, racism, infertility, discrimination, weather disasters, depression, a car accident, no wheelchair ramp, unfair pay, over-priced meds, mental illness, broken marriage...fill-in-the-blank.

The important thing to remember is that it's not happening to you...this time. Each of us will go through difficult moments of our life (and at varying degrees of difficulty) and when it is your turn, will anyone help you carry the weight of hardship? Will anyone fight on your behalf?

----
So much of our grown up worldviews are determined by who said what or little portions of the whole picture framed in distorted justification.

But kids strip all that away because they can look at something and see it in black and white: it is either good or bad. period.

kids being taken away from their moms and dads is bad. It is literally the worst thing that my own children could ever imagine happening to them.
This is bad. period.

connection.

One of my favorite quotes credited to Ayesha Siddiqi says, "Be the person you needed when you were young."

When I was young, I needed someone who had a different perspective - a wider lens of life and humanity and culture and experiences than our small (albeit beloved to me) town. I wanted to see more and learn more and experience more. And I was lucky enough that my parents and teachers could see this in me that they pushed me towards those people. My parents (with reluctance but good faith) put me on an airplane headed to Honduras with a group of doctors and dentists when I was sixteen. They also became what I needed themselves, my Dad the curious researcher and questioner - my Mom the ever patient listening ear while I went on and on about some new thing I learned.

As a teacher now, I see everyday that what so many of my students need is someone who simply has the time of day to notice them. I have students everyday starved for meaningful connection.

The person our young people need is

Someone who puts their phone down. and looks them in the eye.
Someone who listens to what they are saying without a planned, predictable response.
Someone who smiles.
Someone who is silly and cheesy.
Someone who finds common ground with them despite age and interests.
Someone who notices when they are particularly happy or sad or worried and then asks them 'you okay?'
Someone who see when they aren't okay at all and need real help and puts them in touch with who ever it is that support them.

They are the most 'connected' generation in history but there is so little real connection. Our young people need us. We all need each other.

Were we lonely back in our day? yes. Were our parents lonely and their parents lonely and theirs for all of time? yes. But the danger now that we did not have then, is that we have this new layer of artificial connection that is also a means for infinite distraction from dealing with real feelings.

We cannot continue to look at our young people and say - we've all gone through the teenage years, yeah, it sucks. we've all been bullied. we've all felt lonely..."  Because although that may be true - we have not gone through it like them. How often have you said, "thank goodness I didn't have the internet/social media when I was a teenager." If you are like me it is all the time. I read back through my diaries and laugh and cringe. And on top of the social media aspect of it - if we're being honest, really honest with ourselves, painfully brutally honest, they are also living through it with parents, older siblings, and teachers who are so 'connected' themselves they aren't there to help our young people sort through the feelings and bounce back.

I'm not trying to say that phones and social media are the problem. But we cannot ignore the potential impact of having the whole world in our palms and we cannot ignore that social media is false sense of connection that encourages us to ignore the people right in front of us.

There's a million things we can do (need to do) so that when I tell my eight year old son about the Parkland school shooting, his first response isn't, "Momma, maybe you shouldn't work at a school anymore." But some of those things are big and take time in a way that my impact is small.

Maybe there isn't even a point to this post. I'm just typing to sort through my own broken, tired, sore, momma-teacher heart. I can do what I can in this little sphere in which I can reach. I can love and hug our kids and have the hard conversations with them and I can look in their faces and talk and connect with them and do everything I can to try to break poor phone habits so I can be a better version of myself. And I can love my students and push them and encourage them and check in on them and in the face of all their wise cracks and bad behavior see that they're just kids who need someone to not back down or go away. (hi, students who discovered my blog - see you Tuesday, happy long weekend. I do care about YOU!)

there's no answers over here in my corner of the web. Just a call to action. Action in love and kindness and grace and connection. None of us can do everything, but each of us can do something. And I hope that what each of us do is Love one another.

12 Months of Kindness 2018

We are entering into our tenth year of attempting our 12 Months of Kindness project.
We hope within the deepest hope of us as parents, that these efforts towards kindness and a family who forgives and announces to try harder next time, and trying to be examples who go outside of our own comfort for the sake of lending a hand, and intentionally choosing patient thoughts that take in account the benefit-of-the-doubt and perspective...we hope that it will be enough to carve into each of our kids the memories and life experience that the world is good.
And it can always be good, even in the face of scary and sad and evil.
because we each have the ability and capacity to choose love and kindness.

my darlings,
we love you
we dream big for you
we believe in the good in you
and the good in this whole world
please believe too, babies.
mum and dad

12 Months of Kindness 2018
January: sign up to run Dad's team's concession stand
February: surprise snail mail for Valentine's Day to our cousins
March: volunteer at our church fish fry
April: Help at the Johnstown Backpack Project
May: Studer scholarship and give a special thank you to our teachers and bus driver
June: visit the humane society and give a donation
July: 10th (and last!) annual Studer's Invitational
August: surprise our local librarians with a tasty treat
September: Host a big grandparent dinner for Grandparent's day
October: throw an end-of-season football/cheerleading party at our house
November: surprise a family member with groceries
December: deliver cookies and notes to our neighbors

This year, we tried to shoot for more kid-centered monthly tasks now that we've done so many things as a family - we are starting to figure out what is feasible for us in time, finances, and abilities.  There are plenty of repeats on the list from previous years and the kids were all cheering and asking "when are we doing it?!" with joyful smiles.

What's on your list this year towards kindness? I'd love for you to share!

9th Annual Beer Olympics!

As the cold weather sets in and the holiday lights glimmer, let's take it back a few months and reminisce real quick on our penultimate and 9th annual Beer Olympics!

It's so hard to explain Beer Olympics to someone who has never experienced it firsthand. It's a day of drinking games, yes. But also so much more in a weirdly sentimental, make some new friends, competitive, but good hearted, feel good day. I don't know how to describe it but to say - that months and years later when I see people from various sects of our life chatting and laughing together and ask them about how they know each other, often times it begins with "at Beer Olympics," and that somehow describes everything about everything.

We had a beautiful, blue sky day in late June to celebrate our 9th annual event. Greyson's all-star machine pitch baseball team had a tournament that day - so for the first time in nine years, I was flying solo as host for the first half of the day! Thankfully though, I had no stress about it because our Beer Olympic veterans are so amazing and kind and helpful and know the ropes of how the day works. 

As in Beer Olympic fashion, we start the day with a game of Sloshball while we organize the teams, then it's face painting & color hair spraying by team names (we chose to do all Hashtag team names this year, HAH) before we dive right into the main event line up - beginning with Beer Pong and Hungry, Hungry, Hippong. 

Teams earn points by their performance on the various games and many of the games are tournament style so no matter what place you come in, you earn some team points. We also have individual non-mandatory challenges along the way if you feel inclined to earn some points for your team score like Keg Stands, Blow Ball, and Chug Offs. Following Beer Pong we have Dingbat Relay, and Ice Cube Tray Canoe Races.

God bless our friends who sign up to help ref or volunteer during the day too. I could not do this day without our friends who wear those whistles alongside me and put up with the incredible hilarity that comes with trying to organize progressively more intoxicated competitors. Half the success comes from observers (and helpful players trying to win the Olympian and Teacher's Pet awards!) who re-fill beer pitchers, replace kicked kegs, move tables to set up for the next games, and empty garbage cans.  Seriously, I love you all so much. 

To close out the first half of the day before the intermission; we play Slippy Cup (flip cup with a slip and slide) and Anchorman. 

I can't preach enough how important the intermission is for players to refuel (on tons of carbs) and non-alcoholic liquids. Another key to our beer olympics success is that everyone who comes brings something to share - so our garage slowly fills up as friends arrive with roasters, crockpots, desserts, and coolers filled with water and sports drinks. During intermission, the perimeter of our yard becomes the men's bathroom, bodies lay all over the place with plates of food balanced on their bellies, and we do a quick tally of the scores so teams can figure out how hard they need to rest before the games resume.  We plan for the intermission to last about 45mins, but inevitably it lasts at least an hour to a little more.

Then we ease back into the games with a flip cup tournament and a Quad bongs tournament.  The baseball team arrived back a little after intermission and Brandon said to me, "Geez, everyone seems like they are way more drunk than past years" and I laughed and was all like, "babe, that's only because you're sober this year." It's both hilarious and annoying to be on the Ref/sober side of the day, but it's my favorite so I take the whining with a smile and write down all the funny things people say and do to add into our awards ceremony at the end of the night.

My favorite event of the day is Survivor Flip Cup because people get seriously intense about it as it's the competition to rack up huge points for your team if you can keep a representative at a table for a long time (it's like musical chairs with the last one gets kicked off the table idea but with flip cup). And then it's one last chug offs before the Obstacle course finale.

Then it's another intermission while the refs tally team scores and decide on award winners before our big finishing ceremony - always a highlight of the day. We make a bunch of sashes with ridiculous awards and my sister compiles a playlist of songs to go with each award (hilarious!) and we do the whole thing like it's super official and celebratory. 

With the amazing generosity of our players and observers, we raised over $300 to support a local family and a local do-gooder who made a huge sacrifice to help them. It was a double dose of kindness that we were able to give this summer (YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME!!)

Our champs AGAIN this year was Team Pumpkins (#PSL)- two years reigning champs going into our final year of Beer Olympics! 

It's true, we are retiring the Studer's Invitational Beer Olympics after one last guns ablaze 10th annual event coming this summer; with a full weekend of fun, special surprises, and a year-in-advance invite already sent out (LOL). With growing kids and all their activities and just plain getting older (and hangovers that are harder and harder to recover from #sadbuttrue) - we know it's time to hang up our Beer Olympics sashes.

But first - one more time!

ps. Thanks for all who have read and followed along and re-pinned our posts.  Next August 2018, I will have a final Beer Olympics Planning Toolkit available to leave as a legacy. Stay tuned!

a chat with Grey and Gem

I had a chat with Grey and Gem this weekend and started with 'remember a long time ago when white people thought black people should be slaves' and followed with a chat about the civil war and Martin Luther King Jr, and how that was all so crazy and such a long time ago and Grey said, "Mum! We know about this already, why are we talking about it, it makes me feel mad?!" and I said, we're talking about it because something bad happened in Virginia and it's about people who think that having white skin is the best skin.

They asked questions, like "you mean this wasn't a long time ago, but now?" and I told them about the statue being removed and the Confederate flags and how the marchers were upset that they were being removed even though what they stood for was a disgraceful and hurtful part of our history.  They asked lots of "but why?" to which I offered that maybe they didn't read enough, or travel enough, or have enough friends that help them see that the world is big and beautiful and different and has room enough for all of us.

And then because they asked about the other flag, we got into a discussion about WWII and Nazis and how lots of people during that time didn't say 'this is wrong' because they weren't the ones being hurt. And we talked about the brave people that did find ways to help and assist those being persecuted even though it meant putting themselves in danger because it was the right and decent and human thing to do. And I told them about Heather Heyer and how she was there to say 'this is wrong' even though she had white skin and wasn't the one they were marching about.

Gemma cried because she got worried about her godfather Uncle Juice and sobbed 'he has brown skin, do they not like him too?' And Grey tried to rationalize that it wasn't happening in our town, so all the people we love that are brown and black are fine and that we don't really have to talk about it.

And I told him, "honey, we do have to talk about it because not talking about it is like pretending it's not happening or pretending its okay because it's not happening to us or to the people we love. What's wrong is wrong regardless if it's happening to us or not."

and I showed them the pictures of the group of people with the torches and said, "it's especially important that we talk about this because these people who stand for something so terrible look just like us."

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Resources for opening up a discussion with your kids:

Team Studer: How we talk to our kids about privilege

Cup of Jo: Raising race conscious children

Washington Post: How silence can breed prejudice

All Parenting: How to talk to your kids about white privilege 

Medium: It's time for white parents of white kids to bring the resistance home. 

Raising race conscious kids  

HuffPost: Preserving my children's innocence is an act of preserving white supremacy 

12 Months of Kindness Project: 2017

We are starting our ninth year of our commitment to the 12 Months of Kindness Project and it's really become part of who we are as a family.  We try to choose kindness, patience, and empathy in all things we do throughout the year - but our #12mokp is a way for us to intentionally build out at least one kind act for each month of the year.  I have found that if you don't plan it ahead of time, the days just swallow you whole in the regular busy of life and you find yourself at the end of the year in a blink trying to remember where all the days went.

Our 12 Months of Kindness Project gets its own dedicated page in our family yearbooks and the kids ask regularly when we will do certain things again.  We love that our kids are learning first hand that being nice can be easy and makes you feel good....That we get to choose to be nice in all situations - it's up to us!

Over the last few weeks, the kids and I have talked about some of our favorite kind acts we've done in the past and about some new ideas we might try together.  We also talked a little bit about the kindness we do that doesn't technically count for our 12MoKP - like giving breakfast treats to Greyson's bus driver and leaving notes and candy for the mail lady.  And we try to include them in conversations about kind acts that they are too young to do yet - B and I tell them about helpful/kind moments in our days, they check my Red Cross app to see how much 'blood Mum got out' for others, and they make trips with us or help us in small ways to work towards a bigger kind task.

So we're back with our list for this year and as is true for each year, it builds up our year with things to look forward to and ways we can help make this world a little nicer for everyone.

January:  deliver (3) meals to families we know that could use some extra support and love

February:  make valentines for people to brighten their day (classmates, family, the librarian, firefighters, elderly neighbors, etc)

March: Volunteer at our church's Lenten fish fry dinners

April: Volunteer our time at the Johnstown Backpack Project

May: 9th annual Studer Scholarship for high school seniors at CV

June:  Studer's Invitational Beer Olympics (funds go to a charitable cause)

July: Donation to the Humane Society

August:  Pick up trash locally

September:  totally kid-run (plan, make invitations, cook, serve, clean up) at our house for the grandparents (and 'honorary grandparents') for Grandparents Day

October: trick-or-treat for UNICEF

November: make placemats for our local Meals on Wheels (and deliver?)

December: white envelope gift

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I'd love to hear about the acts of kindness that you and your kids do together.  If you're tracking your kindness, please feel free to tag your photos with #12mokp too so that we can inspire one another!

8th annual Studer's Invitational Beer Olympics

We held our 8th annual Studer's Invitational Beer Olympics event this year in October, a big change from our normal summer party. But this awesome event only a few weeks after the birth of our fourth baby was just not going to fly in our sleep-deprived rotten eight weeks.  So, we postponed it until early October and our friends and family braved the rain and chill to have a great time for a great cause!

The event is held at our home and as I say every single year, we could never ever do this without the help, graciousness, enthusiasm and kindness of our participants.  This day always reminds us of how incredibly grateful we are to be surrounded by so many amazing people.   And they all show up with a spirit of generosity and fun as we play together to raise funds for specific charitable goals.  This year, we were able to raise over $370 dollars for a local family that experienced health scares all  year - and who regularly inspire kindness and faithfulness to our entire community.

This year, we split up our 24 participants and organized them into eight teams of three for the day.  We gave them all Halloween themed team names (and corresponding face paint and hairspray!) and then dove right into the games for the day.  

After our customary warm-up game of Sloshball (kickball with booze), we follow our list of events and rules throughout the day while scores are doled out for each event to the teams depending on their performance.

 

We also sprinkle special 'challenge' competitions where each team member can earn a few extra points toward their total score.  We even incorporated the Dizzy Waitress game that made it's viral rounds around the nets this year.  

 

Now in our eighth year of the Studer's Invitational, it is mostly a self-running entity.  We have enough veteran players that everyone can assist with rule explanations to the newbies on their team, all players and observers come loaded down with food and drinks to share, and all day long we have people step in to help in any way during the day (replacing kegs, refilling toilet paper, cleaning up spills, and any other last minute tasks that come up.

Our favorite part of the day is always is the end of the night Award Ceremony where we hand out our individual awards for participants ranging from Loud Mouth to Teacher's Pet to Crybaby, to Most Valuable Drinker.  And then we end the day with the announcement of team's in their final order.  This year, team Pumpkin were the winners which means they'll have their team name added to our trophy stand and they got the first sips out of our Studer Torpedo.

It was another great year of Beer Olympics fun and another giant reminder that we are surrounded by people who are up for anything and who support our weird big ideas to help others.  Thank you to all of you that help make this day such a success.  we appreciate you all so much!