Sprinkle #86
The Princess and I shopped for a seven year old girl who we sponsored through our local Children's Advocacy Center for Christmas. A cute outfit, a baby doll, and loads of baby doll accessories made for a very pink pile of presents. Thinking her mom might enjoy wrapping them herself (I would), I also bought a roll of wrapping paper, some tape, scissors and some labels. We piled it all into a big black plastic bag, labeled it and dropped it off at the center.
Sprinkle #87
One of my childhood friends and I share a love for tea, but we are very rarely able to share a cup together. We live 2000 miles apart, and see each other for only a few hours each year when I visit family back in Rhode Island. Back in the years before motherhood consumed us we also shared a love for writing long newsy letters (by hand of course!). When I moved to Germany, then Texas, we often wrote pages and pages back and forth. Not long ago, while shopping at a store I rarely visit, I saw a brand of specialty tea I thought she'd enjoy, so I picked up a festively decorated tin. I sat down and wrote (yes, with a pen!) a letter, not as long as newsy perhaps as those letters of bygone years. But a letter nonetheless. Off they flew in the mail, winging their way to Rhode Island, wrapped in love and memories for an old friend.
Sprinkle #88
I have a friend who lives in Arizona who just loves the color pink. How could I resist sprinkling her with itty bitty snowmen ornaments with pink scarves that I found quite by accident? I think her four year old daughter might like them too. :-)
Sprinkle #89
We have friends whose family has been sick for two weeks. I kept hearing that little whisper... make dinner... make dinner. I cooked up a pot of healing chicken soup with rice from one of our farm chickens. Delivered it along with a salad.
Sprinkle #90
I had been thinking of doing something special for the children in our church for Christmas. A party. But our vacation and the ensuing madness of trying to get back into school and prepare for Christmas in a few weeks (plus all of the special extra activities that we so enjoy in December) seemed to preclude it. Then one of the other moms in church approached me to tell me she had bags of already-prepared craft supplies left over from another Christmas activity. And The Princess kept talking about the nativity she was practicing with a few of the children. I knew it was going to happen after all. A few emails later we had ourselves a birthday party for Jesus in the works.
The sprinkle part was related to our daughter, The Princess. She is nine, and has a heart for drama. Not only does she act on stage locally, she also writes plays frequently, and performs anywhere she can find an audience. Last year she and a friend wrote an elaborate nativity play, a musical in fact, that took countless hours of practice and preparation (and lots of Mama involvement). We didn't really have time for that this year because of our trip. But she and a few of the younger children, on their own, started acting out the nativity story after church. It was going well until she invited everyone to participate. That is when chaos started creeping in.
I'll be honest, I really wanted to just take over. It was becoming difficult and she was getting frustrated. But instead of giving in to the feeling that it would be so much easier and faster if I took charge, I sat down with her and we talked through the whole thing. With her direction I typed up all that they were doing so that they would have a reference. I asked questions to prompt her to remember props and costumes. And then I let her run with it. I guess you could say this was a sprinkle that was half way between doing something helpful and holding back from doing something unhelpful. Oh my that can be haaaaarrrrrd for me sometimes!
The children did a wonderful job. Even despite the fight between a 4 year old innkeeper and a 3 year old shepherd. :-)
Wow! That last sprinkle would have been hard for me! What a gift you gave The Princess!
ReplyDelete