Kim & Luane's Christmas List

My family has always tossed around a Christmas wish list. Dad usually gets one or two things on the list for me, my sister will get one and my mom will deliberately get me something NOT listed. It's part of my mom's sense of humor. Actually, my favorite gifts from her are the ones she makes. She's made me afghans, a picture pillow, a pad for this storage big Luane built, stitch work, candles, and a quillow -- ever heard of those? It's a pillow and when you "unfold" it, it's a quilt. Then you fold it back up to a pillow. It's like skorts, or a spork. Well, the word is anyway.

Luane's family tree is currently a twig. Lists don't seem necessary. Her mom basically says "send me the link and I'll take care of it". Her mom is generous at Christmas and cares a great deal that she gets us exactly what we need. She's not very technically savvy (knowing this, I set up her new mac with our website as her homepage so she can see us every morning) but is very understanding of us needing certain tools to do our work effectively. She actually bought one of the three cameras we needed to shoot the documentary last year.

So, Luane isn't into lists and it's been like pulling teeth to get her to tell me what she wants. As a compromise, she tells me stuff here and there and then I'm to be creative beyond that. However, I'm the one in our couplehood that wants so badly to choose something personal and sweet that she will love and will bring a tear to her eye and end up getting like a bag of socks for her. I'm just not good at it. And yet, every year she blows me away with her thoughtfulness and dead-on choices of gifts for me. It's a talent.

I'm easy to buy for. I lay it out on the traditional christmas wish list. Just like the song about grown up christmas lists, mine now includes the charities I'd like my family to donate to, spread the cheer that way. I've mever been into "stuff", it just means it's more to take care of and clean. So, I'm choosy and it's almost always relating to our work. There's not much of a boundary between me and my work, especially with this documentary, it spawned from my story so I'm not only in it but all over it. So if there's something I desire for Christmas, you can bet it'll be something I'll use for the doc and our upcoming supporting services.

The list used to be posted on the fridge. Now it's posted on the web. My how times have changed. I hope you get what you desire and wish for. Consider adding your favorite charities to your wish list too. Here are just a few of our favorites:
- Heifer International (being vegetarian, we tend to sponsors the trees...)
- American Forests (make sure you see Inconvenient Truth with Al Gore)
- Habitat for Humanity
- Save the Dolphins foundations
- The Hunger Project
- PFLAG
- HRC (Human Rights Campaign)
- Soulforce

We usually support organizations that don't just band aid but get the community to help itself. There's no long term effect just giving someone a turkey once a year. I'll save that for another blog...Luane has an interesting story around that. Anyway, consider supporting folks who build people up and in turn their communities for long term improvement and prosperity. Have a great week.