ROAK #1 2015

ROAK #1 was from Mom. I was walking into Walmart with a grocery list of my own and as I was walking in these kids asked me if I wanted to help The Dream Center? I said SURE! They then handed me a list of food items.

I took the list of food items and looked it over as I was walking into the produce department. For a minute I stopped and just thought to myself:

"Wow. Ya never know how blessed you are until you realize these kids wouldn't have a nice Thanksgiving Dinner without the donations from the Community"

"Here I am splurging on food, crafty yummy food that is sort of expensive and these kids just want to enjoy Thanksgiving Dinner"

"Gosh I feel like a schmuck"

"I seriously feel like I take what I have for granted!"

"I need to get better at giving instead of wanting all the time"

"I'm a schmuck"!

I then gathered myself together. Got 1 or more of everything on this grocery list and remembered not to cheap their food with a bunch of generic brands. I bought Thanksgiving foods on the list that I would buy for my own family.

Talk about a blessing, a lesson and a heartache all at one time.

I then went home, sat my kids down at the kitchen table and told them all about the story. What happened. How I felt. {I left out the word schmuck and replaced it with ungrateful} and their eyes were big. They heard me loud and clear. Did it change their ungratefulness? Not a whole lot but I think over time if we were to do this enough while making our children EARN what they "want" most of the time, they may just turn out to have big hearts one day. And teach their children the value of giving.

~ Our Shank Family

R.A.O.K. 2015

So we decided to start a new Holiday Tradition for the month of Thanksgiving. It's all about giving thanks {and giving back}. We have some-what done this before in ways of over-tipping during Holidays, donating to a cause or buying jackets for others and things like that but we have never actually set out as a family to make someone's day special without choosing how much, when etc. with the kids completely involved. It's not always about money. We want to teach them how valuable time can be as well. We are going to put our hearts into this without thinking about it.

The kids and I came up with this idea from The Dating Divas.

I like that it had printable's to go along with and a huge list of ideas of things that we can do. Each idea the kids chose was appropriate for their age. I really love that.

 

 We are super excited about getting out into our community and doing fun things this year. I can't wait to see the kids put this into action and hopefully learn from it. Even better - I hope they carry this on to their families when they are older.

~ Our Shank Family

Easter Basket Hunting : A Family Tradition

Here's a little back-story and a how-to for Easter Basket Hunting passed down from my Dad and Step-mom to us kids:

When I was growing up we didn't just get Easter baskets. My parents didn't like it to be that easy. So what they did is made us find them. The older we got, the harder the hunt was. The more we had to use our brains to put together the pieces to find our baskets.

The How To:

There is always a starting location for each kid. Let's use Tyler's for example. Tyler's first label started in his room. So you take a sticky note and write a (go here message). His first message was stuck to the mirror on his dresser:

Not my images - I totally forgot to take photos of the easter basket hunt. I found this on creative ramblings and along with it - a christ centered easter basket hunt that I will start implementing when the kids get to a certain age to be able to follow it. Next year - Colten will end up following this one. Find link to Creative Ramblings at bottom :)

This is where you get nice and clean. ---> next label would be stuck inside the shower.

The next label will say:

This is where you say 3 prayers each day ---> next label would be stuck to the dining room table.

The next label will say:

This is where mom washes all your stinky socks ---> next label will be inside the washing machine lid.

And we would do about 20 labels per child. The goal is to tire them. Wear them out. So we would put label upstairs that would be connected to a basement label that would be connected to second story then upstairs again and so forth. They ran around like crazy kids for around 5 minutes each to find their baskets!!

It's always so fun to keep a family tradition alive :)

We love this tradition and hope one day our kids will continue to pass it along :)

Here is the link to "Creative Ramblings" the "Christ" centered way for an Easter Basket Hunt.

~ Our Shank Family