Operation Christmas Child Party 2013

It’s the beginning of November, and that means two things.

It’s almost my birthday, AND Operation Christmas Child collection week is coming soon!

OCC_Me

As always, we will be combining those two things  at the House of Hills

This will be our fourth year partying it up with Operation Christmas Child!!

In 2010, we had the party at our temporary house. We packed 89 boxes that day! It was so much fun!

In 2011, for my 40th birthday, our goal was to hit 120 boxes… 3 for every year of my life. We almost made it. We dropped off 110 boxes. I was so pleased.

In 2012, we packed boxes on election day in our tiny house. We packed 75 boxes to send to those in need. We also collected items for Super Storm Sandy victims. It was a great day!

This year’s party is on November 16th. If you’re a local friend, you’ve probably been invited to my OCC Birthday Party Facebook page. If not and you want to be, let me know!

If you would like to pack a box for my birthday and aren’t in town,  you can one online  at Samaritan’s Purse.

Here’s what I’m providing this year at my OCC party:

  • The box
  • Bouncy balls
  • Wash cloths
  • Toothbrushes
  • Crayons
  • Candy
  • Miscellaneous extras
  • Snacks and drinks

Here’s what you need to bring to the OCC party:

  • Age specific toys
  • Age specific clothing (optional)
  • Toothpaste
  • Bar of soap double baggied
  • $7 cash or check per box (have to put in each box) – or you can print labels to track your box online before you come by visiting here.

For more information about what to pack in an Operation Christmas Child shoebox, visit Samaritan’s Purse.

Be sure to check out this Operation Christmas Child Pinboard to help you get ideas!

This party has become one of my favorite days of the year. My goal this year is to do another 75 boxes.

Who wants to help me?

 

Contents on this site are ©2012 HouseofHills. All Rights Reserved. Please contact me through this blog if you would like to publish this content somewhere.

30 Day Giving Challenge Day 18 2012

The House of Hills is once again participating in the

30 DAY GIVING CHALLENGE!

Our goal is to give something EVERY day of the month. Big or small, every give is a gift to someone! Join the giving with us. We’d love to hear what you’re doing.

Every year for Thanksgiving my family stays in multiple condos at the beach. And when I say my family, I mean like lots and lots of family. Sunday night is ALWAYS cookout night, and I ALWAYS make my deviled eggs.

So that’s what I gave today…deviled eggs. And, they were delicious!

Do you have a favorite dish that your family likes for you to make for them?

Follow the 30 Day Giving Challenge on Twitter and Facebook.

 

30 Day Giving Challenge Day 17 2012

The House of Hills is once again participating in the

30 DAY GIVING CHALLENGE!

Our goal is to give something EVERY day of the month. Big or small, every give is a gift to someone! Join the giving with us. We’d love to hear what you’re doing.

Today, we left for our week in Florida with my entire family (on my step-dad’s side). All the cousins run around together for an entire week. It is MY ABSOLUTELY FAVORITE week of the year. I love being at the beach. I love being with my family. I love that I actually relax for a few days. I love, love, love it!

One of my favorite things about a week at beach is that I actually get to read some books. I love to read some books. And, my daughter has inherited this love of reading some books. So, I hid some new books in her backpack to find on her way down to Florida. She read the first one in the car, and then read this one after a trip down to the beach.

I love spoiling her when it comes to books. It’s such an easy give.

Do you ever surprise your kids with gifts just because.

Follow the 30 Day Giving Challenge on Twitter and Facebook.

 

30 Day Giving Challenge Day 16 2012

The House of Hills is once again participating in the

30 DAY GIVING CHALLENGE!

Our goal is to give something EVERY day of the month. Big or small, every give is a gift to someone! Join the giving with us. We’d love to hear what you’re doing.

Many parts of the Northeast are still reeling from the affects of Superstorm Sandy. We at the House of Hills wanted to do our part to help out so we collected items needed at my Operation Christmas Child Birthday Party last week.

Today, I mailed the package.

It was actually rather emotional. I prayed over the box as I dropped it off. I wished I could do more. I never feel like I can do enough in situations like this. I feel blessed to have so much while others are suffering and have so little. The man at the shipping store said he’d been shipping tons of stuff up to NY and NJ. We spent a moment being overwhelmed together.

There are many places where you can still give to help. The fight up there isn’t over yet.

Follow the 30 Day Giving Challenge on Twitter and Facebook.

 

30 Day Giving Challenge Day 15 2012

The House of Hills is once again participating in the

30 DAY GIVING CHALLENGE!

Our goal is to give something EVERY day of the month. Big or small, every give is a gift to someone! Join the giving with us. We’d love to hear what you’re doing.

I put these in the office for my co-workers to find.

I got a text that said “Thank You.” My co-workers LOVE flavored coffee! I was glad to give them some!

Follow the 30 Day Giving Challenge on Twitter and Facebook.

 

30 Day Giving Challenge Day 14 2012

The House of Hills is once again participating in the

30 DAY GIVING CHALLENGE!

Our goal is to give something EVERY day of the month. Big or small, every give is a gift to someone! Join the giving with us. We’d love to hear what you’re doing.

With Thanksgiving next week, I wanted to make sure Maggie’s teachers knew how THANKFUL we are for them, so I sent in a little gift to tell them so. Remember, I like to send/bring gifts to teachers.

I sent in these cute Pumpkin Spice candles that I picked up at Cracker Barrel yesterday. They were already 40% off so weren’t very expensive at all. I put them in a clear bag with some crinkles and tied it with some ribbon. I even added a quick note I wrote on an index card.

A QUICK AND EASY present to share with two special ladies how much we are thankful for them!

 

Follow the 30 Day Giving Challenge on Twitter and Facebook.

 

30 Day Giving Challenge Day 13 2012

The House of Hills is once again participating in the

30 DAY GIVING CHALLENGE!

Our goal is to give something EVERY day of the month. Big or small, every give is a gift to someone! Join the giving with us. We’d love to hear what you’re doing.

It’s my birthday! Whoop! Happy Birthday to me. Happy Birthday to me!

I already had my birthday party – Operation Christmas Child style – so today was a pretty normal day. Well, not really. I had my yearly physical, which is of course always a joy. And, now that I’m 41 they add an EKG and chest x-ray to the fun. And, the gave me an order to go get a mammogram. I mean seriously… you go to the doctor once only to have to go a trillion more times. However, I was very kind at the doctor’s office. Even, when it was getting close to noon and I still hadn’t eaten because I had to fast for my blood work. I was nice to people and smiling while my stomach made ridiculous noises.

After school, Maggie and I headed down to church where Hubby was working a conference. She wanted to ring things up in the store, and I had promised to do the afternoon Starbucks run.

So our give today (after my smiles of course) started with the Starbucks run. You’ve got to love walking into Starbucks, pulling out your phone and then reading off things you don’t even understand. I always crack up when I do the run because I really don’t even know what I’m talking about. I don’t drink coffee. I have no idea what a half double triple frap with whip is. Is that even something? I don’t know.

We got the coffees and headed over to church to serve Hubby’s team. They were very excited to see us coming. Working conferences is HARD work people. HARD WORK! Be nice to people who work conferences. They’re usually exhausted by the time you even get there. And then they continue to work HARD!

Then the girl jumped behind a register in the store and rang people up. (No, she’s not allowed to actually do the taking of money part, but she does everything else.) She loves to ring people up! And, people LOVE to have her wait on them. We even had one guy ask her to sign the book he just bought. At one point, it was just she and I in the store. All the others had rushed off to do one thing or another or eat dinner. So, that was our second serve of the day. Helping out at Hubby’s store.

It was a good day. Even if I did start it getting poked and prodded.

 

Follow the 30 Day Giving Challenge on Twitter and Facebook.

 

30 Day Giving Challenge Day 12 2012

The House of Hills is once again participating in the

30 DAY GIVING CHALLENGE!

Our goal is to give something EVERY day of the month. Big or small, every give is a gift to someone! Join the giving with us. We’d love to hear what you’re doing.

Tonight Maggie and I went and had pizza for a cause. We even met up with some friends.

Our friends at Mia’s Pizza and Eats and Cumming Local were having a food drive for Food for Thought. We gave our cans and a gift card to the wonderful people who run the organization.

If you are local, you need to check out Food For Thought. They do an amazing job distributing food throughout the county, and they make it SO EASY for us. They drop off an orange bag for you to fill when you can. Then, every other month, they come by and swap your full bag for another empty one. See, I told you it was easy.

Follow the 30 Day Giving Challenge on Twitter and Facebook.

 

30 Day Giving Challenge Day 11 2012

The House of Hills is once again participating in the

30 DAY GIVING CHALLENGE!

Our goal is to give something EVERY day of the month. Big or small, every give is a gift to someone! Join the giving with us. We’d love to hear what you’re doing.

It’s Sunday again so I did my weekly Sunday giving by serving in the preschool environment at church. I do love those little cuties and all their crazy they bring to service each week.

In addition, this morning Maggie and I loaded all 75 OCC boxes into the mini-van and brought those to church.

We had a friend bring us a few things to pack in some boxes so I think we’ll get four more boxes packed this week and send those to church with hubby on Thursday.

WE ARE SO THANKFUL TO ALL OUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY that helped us pack shoe boxes this year. It’s such a privilege to pack these boxes each year. We love it.

Today was one of my favorite days at church. We started the BE RICH campaign. We’ve done it each year for the past five years, and it is just SO AMAZING to watch God work through it.

Timothy 6:18: “Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.”

We are “rich” here at the House of Hills, not by American standards, but for sure by World standards. We have so much more than so many, and it is such a blessing to be able to share. Our church does a great job of finding reputable organizations with which to partner to do fabulous things in our community and around the world. We even had a local news team at church today reporting about Be Rich. It was so fun to see our friends on the screen.

It was an amazing day of giving and watching others give. I so love when the our minds and hearts turn to how we can help and serve others during this season. It just makes me smile inside and out.

Follow the 30 Day Giving Challenge on Twitter and Facebook.

 

30 Day Giving Challenge Day 10 2012

The House of Hills is once again participating in the

30 DAY GIVING CHALLENGE!

Our goal is to give something EVERY day of the month. Big or small, every give is a gift to someone! Join the giving with us. We’d love to hear what you’re doing.

Tonight we did a give that Maggie has been absolutely begging to do for the last two years. Each year as we start talking about what we’re going to do for the giving challenge, she has asked that we pay for someone behind us in the drive thru line. Each year, it’s gone on the calendar, and each year, it hasn’t happened for one reason or another.

This year as we were looking at the calendar, she pointed to today and said.”There mom. We can do it on Saturday after my late rehearsal. I’m going to need to eat anyway.” I agreed, and we put it on the calendar.

On the way to rehearsal, she confirmed that going through the drive thru was still the plan. I assured her it was. When I picked her up, she was giddy with excitement. We were taking a friend home too, and Maggie was so full of joy about the whole thing that the other girl got excited too.

When we first got in the line, there wasn’t anyone behind us. Maggie was almost in tears. She was turned around in her seat praying that someone would pull in behind. When someone did, she started bouncing. “We’re going to do it mom. We can do it!”

When I pulled up to the window and asked to pay for the people behind us, the young man just looked at us stunned and said, “Why?” He apparently had never been part of an random act of kindness. I explained what we were doing, and asked him to tell the people behind us “Happy Thanksgiving.”

The girls were both turned around in their seats trying to see the reaction of the people behind us. Unfortunately, it was already dark so it was hard to see. It led to a great conversation about not needing recognition when you give to someone. I shared that my favorite way to give is anonymously. I don’t need the gratification of seeing the recipient’s reaction. I give because Jesus asked us to give, not so someone can say thank you.

So, today’s give was some chicken nuggets and a chicken sandwich… at least that’s what the receipt said.

Have you ever paid for the person behind you in the drive thru?

Follow the 30 Day Giving Challenge on Twitter and Facebook.