25 Days of Giving, Days 12 - 22

Three days till Christmas!!! And even more mind-boggling, there's only nine days left until 2014. Where did time go?? Other than a few late gifts I'm mailing out tomorrow, I'm as prepared for Christmas as I'm going to get. As far as this 25 Days of Giving goes, I'm about ten days behind.

For days 1-11, I completed six "days of giving" - including a few clothing and toy donations, and some Christmas cards for soldiers. The past ten days have been pretty jam-packed with a trip up North to Modesto, and some Christmas shopping and festivities, so I've been checking off some of the less time-consuming things that I wanted to get done off of my list.

7. Clothing donation for Planet Aid (#19 on my list) - I've been rummaging through my closet (for about the tenth time this year) and found a few more things I doubt I'll ever wear again. They're all bagged up and ready to be dropped off at the Planet Aid clothing bin conveniently located at the end of my street.

8. Sign Change.org petitions (#28 on my list) - I got lost on this site for awhile, looking at all the animal cruelty and food safety petitions. I actually enjoyed writing my comments on why I felt these petitions were important. In case your interested, here's a link to all the animal petitions and you can find the food safety petitions here.

9. Donation to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Their commercials get me every time, especially now that I have Ezzy.

10. Toy donation (Toys R Us gift card) + Christmas card to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Here's the address, if you're interested:
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
Donor Services
Attention: "VOLUNTEER SERVICES"
595 North Parkway
Memphis, TN  38105

11. Donation to March of Dimes, per Zshnette's idea. And, if you donate before the end of the year, your donation will be matched. Win/win.

12. I drove out of my way (only a two-hour round trip) to buy my brother a special edition video game that he really wanted and they only had a few copies left in California. This may not be for the greater good, but I'm including it because giving and generosity should really begin within the family.

13. I've gathered up a collection of canned and dry goods to donate to a soup kitchen in Monrovia. Those will be dropped off tomorrow (along with the clothes).

Ok, so I'm actually 12 days behind, with only 3 days to go. Could be worse, right? So far I haven't done anything involving Christmas cookies. I'm afraid if I make them I'll just wind up eating most of them. Also, Joe said if I deliver cookies to firemen, then he's volunteering as a Cheerleader laundry person. Not really sure what that is or if such a thing exists, but we'll just skip the whole cookies for firemen thing. I also haven't done any of the random acts of kindness on my list, and those look really fun, so I plan on crossing a few of those off in the next few days.

I hope everyone's enjoying this merry season with loved ones!