Giving back, Part Deux

It's that time of year again where I attempt to not let the commercialism crush me. This year's opportunity involves some of my dearest friends and one of our longest standing traditions.

I think this is the 13th year of our Christmas tradition, and we are trying something new ('changing it up'). Instead of buying a gift for our secret santa, we have all decided to make a donation in honor of them. One of the organizations that we will be using is kiva.org, where you can give a micro-loan to an individual or group in a developing country to help support their small business. They eventually pay you back, and you get to reinvest the money. It is the gift that keeps on giving. If you are interested in learning more or 'changing things up' this year, you can find more information on their website kiva.org

For more ideas, I also compiled a more extensive list last year. Some of the organization I purchased from and would recommend included Nighlight, Women's Bean Project, Raven and Lily, and Punjammies.

Merry Christmas!

we love LB

Yesterday was my "give a day, get a free disneyland ticket" volunteering day. We chose to help clean up our city, and boy was it a dirty little thing. We focused our efforts on storm drains because of the recent rains, so not only did we clean up a part of LB, but also saved a few oceans and whales while we were at it.

Cleaning up LB is entertaining in and of itself. The best piece of 'trash' we found all day was no contest: a dime bag of coke outside of an unnamed donut shop. Other honorable mentions included a dirty diaper (Ronnie found this one and will have nightmares for a few weeks about it), woman's underwear, a handle of a toy gun, and alot of qtips (are people really walking down the street cleaning their ears?)

The real question of the day we were all left with was this: After giving back to your community, what is the most valuable reward? A ticket to Disneyland or the chance to help out your neighborhood?

We all voted for the bag of coke.

Christmas Update

a tad bit late....

So I was alittle cryptic in sharing what Ronnie and I were doing for our Christmas gift, and for good reason- I was concerned that it may not turn out as I had envisioned. Which was true. So true that even in person, no one was able to accurately describe our creation. But it has grown on me over time, and maybe I can use that reason for the delay. But without further ado, behold- our Christmas sandman:otherwise known as the Christmas volcano. Ronnie had a bit of a different vision. Some may say it is cheating, but I'll let you be the judge:
What else did we get each other for Christmas? Why what I always wanted- a Honduran toilet!

All kidding aside, thank you Parkcrest for a great idea. This was a very special and meaningful Christmas for me.