Sunday, January 11, 2009

A Grateful Heart

As I started back to work this past week I was in for a big surprise! Prior to winter vacation I had planned to host our annual staff holiday party at my house. I cleaned, made lots of treats and organized the traditional white elephant gift exchange. Unfortunately, the party had to be canceled because of our monumental snow storm. The day of the doomed party my phone kept ringing with people asking if we could still do the gift exchange after winter break. Now, in the past the white elephant gift exchange has had more trash than treasure (i.e., the basketball hoop with ball attached that you strap to your waist and then proceed to make a basket using only your hips). With this thought in mind I couldn't figure out why everyone was so keen on making sure this event happened!
Unbeknownst to me my friends at work had planned on turning the gift exchange into a surprise "donation shower" for Hannah's Hope in Ethiopia! They were going to carry on with the usual white elephant game and see how long it took me to figure out that all the baby clothes, lotion and formula were for me to take to Ethiopia. What a crafty group I work with! I had no idea! And boy would I have felt badly if Hannah's Hope received all of those nice things and someone ended up with the re-gifted whoopee cushion I had wrapped up!
I am so thankful for all the teachers I work with, their caring and generosity. They are so excited for us and can't wait to meet Baby M.! Thanks View Ridge!

People are still bringing me donations because no one was sure how they were going to get things to me. Here is just a small sampling!

Isabelle helped go through everything and is very excited too.

Isabelle's Thank You
(Sorry about the weird angle. This was taken with our new camera and the movie isn't staying rotated. Aaarh! You'll also really have to turn up the volume.)

2 comments:

jody said...

that is so sweet!! what a great bucn of co-workers!! (seeing as i am a stay at home mom, i do not think my co workers are as thoughtful, in fact the dog is just snoring and contributing nothing. hmph.)

Amber said...

so happy to have found your blog. we are adopting from ethiopia and are so excited to see what God will do.