Pay it forward

As a former Starbucks partner (employee) I always enjoy hearing those drive thru stories where one person decides to start a chain of random acts of kindness and pay for the customer's order behind them:

These are examples of what two blogger friends did:

Brooke's birthday was full of acts of kindness

Michelle's Village - because sometimes it takes a village

As for me I am always quick about clicking like and commenting "I am in" when somebody posts a pay it forward activity. I was a total slacker on this one, though. January 4, 2013 I posted the following:

As it was January, the month of making resolutions, 

I went ahead and printed out address labels so I would be ready when inspiration would strike - let's say in February. Or maybe March. Surely people would have forgotten about it by then and be really surprised and pleased. 

Then I got busy. St. Patrick's Day. Earth Day. The frog party. Our trip. Summer break. Colin starting Kindergarten. Colin turning 5 years old. Halloween. Getting ready for our - and other people's - advent calendar. You get the picture. 11 months gone. Ironically I was blogging about getting organized and not procrastinating all the time. 

Time to get going! 

A disadvantage of wanting to do things nicely (perfectly?) like including a craft and a nice hand written card, oh and maybe a picture - is of course you never get around to do it. 

On Dec 11, 2013 I proudly shipped off my packages including a printout of the original Facebook post, a couple hand written lines and Swiss chocolate (what's not to love, right? Especially if you live, let's say, in Dubai, Manchester or Los Angeles.)

Of course paying it forward is not about buying chocolate. So let's see if  I can come up with something else I did in 2013.

Turns out Colin did. As mentioned I did some purging at our house. Threw away stuff. And then there was the cute stuff like the stuffed Barbapapa and the "soft bowling Barbafamily" Colin loved so much as a 1 year old. 

Usually when I ask him about the baby toys, he always, always wants to keep them, claiming he still plays with them. I heard about a little girl who would dance triangles if she got them. (Quote, her mom) This time he agreed to give them to that girl he doesn't even know. I heard she was very happy when she got our box!

Same goes for the Canada shirt. He wore it until he could hardly fit into it - or undress for that matter. It went to a younger boy who actually IS Canadian.

I am part of a group of online mommies who support each other when some of the husbands are insensitive or the kids pushes our buttons. We exchange restaurant and hotel recommendations and post cute baby pics. Whenever one of the ladies needs help with her CV, gets fired or is nervous about a job interview, I am there to help.

My time for charity. That's a lot of hours I could have spent playing with the little guy, having coffee with a friend, taking a nap or blogging. Instead I attended countless meetings, some of them of the disturbing kind, organized events, baked cakes and worked at our consignment store.  

As I will hand over my duties at the yearly assembly in March, I will have to think about something new to do. Oh, look!! 

Oops, I did it again!