Orphanage

This morning the kids and I were able to go to one of the local orphanages. We've been preparing for our visit for a while. The activity girls had wanted to make up Christmas stockings to give to all the children (about 60). We asked pappa (Grandma Burger) to send us her Christmas scraps and she sent over some of the cutest fabric. Lalee and I than sewed 65 goodie bags (we tried to make Christmas stockings but we couldn't get them to look right without them being too big to fill).
For one of our activities the girls filled the bags with treats and made cards which said "Merry Christmas" and "You are so special". Several of the girls are bi-lingual and translated the cards so the children would be able to read them. We went down with the activity girls and relief society sisters.

While we were at the orphanage we tried to teach the kids some American Christmas songs but the Japanese kids were more thrilled with the bells for jingle bells. We started singing 'head, shoulders, knees and toes' and they got into that.This is our neighbor, Evan. He and his mom and siblings joined us. He was so cute when he was handing out goodie bags to the kids!

We blurred out the kids faces for privacy reasons.

We also had cookie decorating and other games. It was neat to be able to spend time with these children and it made me appreciate my own life, especially my family, so much more.