Treasures of learning kindness

Yesterday was our supposedly "epic" snowstorm. Although the weather itself didn't actually live up to the media hype, we did get dumped on with a decent amount of snow. Possibly the most we have gotten in a 12 hour period this winter.

All area schools were closed.

I had some crazy excited boys on my hands. They were nearly bouncing off the walls.

Which is cool for a couple of hours.

Then it requires some quick and creative thinking to reign it all in.

I decided around mid morning to bake cookies with them.

They loved that idea!

We got messy.

We had fun.

We ate alot of cookie dough.


My sweet lil' Jay came to me, all breathless and bright eyed,

"Mom! The snow plow drivers are working so hard and doing such a good job. Can we please give them some fresh, warm cookies??"

Oh man... that kid. I love that he is beginning to look at things through a heart of kindness. Wanting to give more and more.

This has been a journey with him.

One that has been prayed about and nurtured.

And to see his enthusiasm with this idea was dear to this mama.

The bad news.... short of standing in the road and risking serious injury, I had no idea how we could possibly get cookies to the snow plow drivers who were working so hard to clear our roads.

So we talked about it and decided that we could probably write a thank you note and send it, or drop it off, to the county office some time soon.

But, I mentioned to Jay that our mail carrier had no choice but to be out on the roads yesterday as well. There was alot of snow, and many houses did not have good access to their mailboxes. I explained to Jay that regardless of this, the mail delivery people had to deliver the mail. No matter what.

So we put three warm cookies on a blue plate, festively - and oh-so-appropriately, adorned with blue and white snowflakes.

Jay assisted me in lovingly wrapping the cookie plate with plastic.

We attached a note that simply read: "To our mail carrier, Thanks for all that you do! Enjoy the cookies."

We trudged through knee deep snow and stuck our gift into the mailbox.

Jay kept asking me about it.

"Do you think she came yet?"

"Are they still out there?"

"Will she love them?"

Love his heart!

It was several hours later than the usual mail delivery time when I finally noticed car tracks leading up to and away from our mail box.

I told Jay that she had been there and he smiled.


Today I went out to get our mail and found this:

I am about to leave the house to pick up Jay, and I can.not.wait to show the note to him!

It was so sweet to find this in the mailbox today, but what I love the most is how this is going to significantly reinforce, to a certain 5 year old, how good it feels to think of others and be kind!

*Update*

Wishing you all could have seen his huge grin! He was ecstatic and already making plans for his next act of kindness.