A visit to the orphanage...

A few weeks ago, Emma, my dramatic, project oriented one, asked if she could collect things for an orphanage. Honestly, my first reaction was that it sounded like a lot of work, but being the Christmas season, I thought I should try to help her. So, I gave her some garbage bags and a wagon, and sent her and Sarah on their way. It kept them both very busy for several hours for about 3 days. It was great!! And my Japanese friend from church, Yumi, contacted an orphanage in Hiroshima and set things up for us. The girls collected about 10 large garbage bags full of clothes/toys, and $230 cash. Yesterday we shopped w/the $ buying soccer balls, underwear/socks, candy, bubblegum toothpaste, and tattoo bandaids. Today we drove w/Yumi to Hiroshima to drop off the goods. We took a little tour of the facility, there were about 20 babies! So sad, they were so cute!! The girls wanted so bad to take one home w/us. They assured me dad wouldn't notice. And honestly, as crazy as our house is these days, he probably wouldn't. The kids got to play outside w/some of the kids for a little while. The language barrier turned out to be a good thing when a few of the little boys kept saying words that Yumi wouldn't translate for us. On the way home Yumi took us out to dinner--she is way too nice, seriously the nicest person I've ever met. Hello--after me being late to pick her up, then enduring the drive down w/me and my kids, and the drive back, and Luke did not like his carseat today, she wants to take us out to dinner?? We went out for Japanese/Italian food. The pizza was very good but different--very thin crust, almost like a cracker instead of bready crust. Well, better go, kids are running wild and should have been to bed long ago....