Herway Sibling Christmas Thing

Last year Seth's siblings decided that instead of doing the usual Christmas gift exchange, that we'd pool the money that would be spent on each other to help provide a better Christmas to someone in need. Seth's older brother and his family were in charge of overseeing how the money was spent last year and this year it was our turn. I'm blogging about it so the Herway's can hear/read about what we did with it this year.

Originally, I wanted to spend the money to dinners to give to the homeless. San Diego, as you've probably heard, has a crazy huge homeless population. I envisioned us making a delicious homemade meal, boxing it up in individual sized aluminum take-out containers (like Cafe Rio) and taking them downtown and passing them out. I ran this idea by a friend to see if she thought it was stupid/unsafe to walk around downtown passing out food with little kids in tow. She told me that a couple of years ago some people either got arrested or fined for giving homemade food to the homeless. Apparently it's against the law! That's one of the dumbest things I've heard in my life.

We then got in touch with the Relief Society president in our ward to see if there was a family in our ward we could help out. Maybe provide food for a Christmas meal or something. Our ward takes in a pretty poor area and there are a lot of needy families. She told us our ward just likes to donate gift cards to the families and they can get what they need.

I looked for some other ideas and eventually settled on buying gifts for families staying at the YWCA. In addition to other programs which focus efforts on eliminating racism and empowering women the YWCA provides a Women and Children's center for victims of domestic violence. They also provide housing for homeless families when available. By the time I called the center most of the women and children had received everything they had requested but the YWCA said they were still in need of items for the fathers.

I think Seth and Taft look so much alike in this picture

The boys were a huge help

Taft thought all the dads might want their own Padres pillow pet

And Spiderman mask

And Lukie stayed happy devouring a box of chocolate Teddy Grahams

Monday night for FHE we headed to the temple to see the Christmas lights and then went to Target to pick out some things for the YWCA. Their list also highly recommended gift cards...but that's boring. We picked out a few other things on the list: NFL/MLB/NBA t-shirts, socks, and hair clippers. We also bought 4 gift cards. 2 for the YWCA and 2 for us. Just kidding, the other 2 were for families from our ward.

Tuesday the little boys and I dropped off the things at the YWCA. Tonight is our ward Christmas party and we'll turn in the other gift cards then.

When I was younger my family helped provide some Christmas gifts for a family staying at the homeless shelter in Salt Lake. We got to meet the family we bought the gifts for. The family was just a mom, a young boy, and a baby girl. I remember we bought the baby girl a dress from babyGap and I thought it was the cutest. I remember walking back to the room they stayed in. I probably was only 9 or 10 at the time and I still remember it. I wish we could have met the people we were able to help this Christmas. I'm glad we've started this tradition! Jake and Mel, you're up next!