Gift 5 - Anonymous

Last  Sunday we decided to take a tag from the angel tree at church. Things have been really tight, but it's a tradition that I like to participate in if I can.

Each tag represents a child of someone who is incarcerated and won't be seeing their parent for Christmas. It lists the child's name, age, desired gifts (usually clothing) and a message from the parent.

We chose a 7-year-old boy. They asked for jeans, a long-sleeve shirt, a hoodie and books appropriate for 2nd grade.

DJ reminded me that morning that we still had a gift to purchase, and how slow we were both moving, it ended up being the focus for the day. We spent close to 3 hours running around to different stores.

In the end, we purchased Arizona Jeans, long sleeve shirt and hoodie. We included and a $15 gift certificate to JCPenney, just in case they needed to exchange or get anything else. At the bookstore we found a fun book about the jellyfish & a narwhal, done in the style of a comic strip. And I picked out the book "Stone Soup", a classic story.

STONE SOUP synopsis: 
(If  you've never read it)

Soldiers visit a small town asking to be fed and housed for the night, but the villagers tell them that they have no food to spare. They tell the villagers that they can teach them how to make soup out of stones. Intrigued, the impoverished villagers agree. As the soup is being made different townspeople add vegetables and spices, until there is a full and hearty soup for everyone to eat. Satisfied, the villagers put them up for the night, believing that they learned how to make soup from a stone.

Our gifts - I forgot to get a photo before we bagged them up.

Something to add... 

As we were dropping off a gift, DJ mentioned that our names for on the angel tree. The paper ornaments had been removed, showing the names of the children and gifts to pick up, and had been replaced by paper ornaments that looked much the same... only these ornaments were not just in the shape of angels, they were decorated angels. And beneath each angel was the name of a donor.  

I can't explain the warmth that came over me when we saw our angel. I wish I could be there when that little boy opens his gifts from his dad, but I'm hoping that it makes his Christmas a little easier.