Today we went to Pancakes with Santa and Mrs. Claus at the community center. It was a nice gesture by the community and included breakfast, coloring activities, a ukulele band, elves, and pictures with the royal Christmas family. We ran into friends we know from my work and from A's school/gymnastics. A opted to sit in Mrs. Claus's lap, looking a little suspicious of Santa.
After that, we did a little light shopping downtown for some of the important people in our lives.
We also reprised the dreaded Target felt tree. I had a lot of trepidation about it but A was excited. Fortunately there were no meltdowns (from either of us, but I was more surprised for me!). I went in armed with extremely low expectations and a case of thumbtacks and the experience was significantly better this year.
We are continuing to work on kindness as we gather toys to donate. We have a few new toys we never got around to (or were repeats of other toys) that we want to donate to a program like toys for tots (if anyone knows of any in the area, let me know!) as well as some gently used toys we'd like to give to a clinic or shelter. In terms of institutional philanthropy, I am incredibly proud of our department. The graduate student organization adopted a family with four children from our local domestic violence shelter. By the time, I saw the sign up sheet, so many wishes had already been fulfilled. The grad students are gathering the items purchased by students/faculty/staff (for the mom and her kids), wrapping everything, picking up gas and grocery gift cards, and delivering everything in time for their family to have Christmas. I hope this becomes a new tradition in our department because it is bringing us all such joy. I would recommend similar drives to my friends and colleagues!
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