PPBF: All The Lost Things

Happy Friday; today I'm thinking about hope.

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Sharing That Kindness Currency

Today I'm thinking about the power of kindness to create a win-win as 

we scurry through our days, our weeks, our months, and our years.

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A Recipe For Hope

Today I'm excited because I've stepped out of my comfort zone to enter a holiday writing contest that involves writing a children's story. Fiction. Something I don't feel very confident about. But since it's about a Holiday Hero, it called my name and really challenged me to craft my 250 words into a timely tale.

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The Kindness Olympics

Happy Random Acts of Kindness Week. We've been on such a kindness kick at school this year that it almost feels like we're training for the Kindness Olympics, as if there were such a thing. We kicked off the year by collecting quarters so that our Student Council leaders could buy some fleece to cut and tie these beautiful blankets to help warm up our friends who are struggling with homelessness. We collected enough quarters to buy the fleece for fifty blankets . . . 

and fill Mr. Whitlock's van for distribution in Houston.

We had just finished with the fleece when we received this incredible donation of blankets from our friends at Warm Up, America!, knit, crocheted, and tied as housewarming gifts for those friends who are just now returning home after Hurricane Harvey displaced them six months ago.

What a delight it has been to distribute this generous gift. Even as I was finding homes for these gorgeous throws, we were busy in Art class creating our Kindness Rocks. Just this past week, this one came in from a school in Racine, Wisconsin.

At the end of January, we welcomed the Kids For Peace Kindness Team . . . 

 to build our Peace Garden and dedicate our Peaceful Hearts Playground. We are so grateful to GameTime, Hasbro, Kind Coins contributors, and our PTO for our new state-of-the-art play space.

Our #kindcoins spokesperson, Jet Stream Jax, has gone on location several times these past few weeks to video chat from the playground with schools who donated to help make our dream play space a reality. It's super fun to watch him interact with other kindness crusaders from coast to coast. 

Before we could even start breaking in our new Challenge Course, it was time to launch our annual Sweets for Our Soldiers campaign. We made these colorful, creative Valentines for our troops in Counseling Classes . . . 

and sent out this request for baked goods.

And did our school family ever respond in kind; just look at this table filled with kindness from our kitchens waiting for our student leaders to put together our priority mail packages.

Thirty six of these care packages are heading to the ten deployed servicemen that we adopted at the time of this post.

And for fun, we cut up our PSA posters like this one . . . 

 and put them in the boxes to give the soldiers a puzzle to build.

We are so grateful to the Friendswood Rotary for their

$500 donation to help defray the cost of postage.

You may think that we're done donating for a while, but just this week I saw some adorable PSA posters being hung in our halls, announcing a Pet Supply drive to help our shelters who are still housing Hurricane Harvey rescue animals. 

See what I mean about the Kindness Olympics? Just imagine if the world were as determined, dedicated, and driven to warm our world with kindness as our olympic athletes are to win a medal for their countries.

I'm so thankful to work in a place where we truly are 

in training for the Kindness Olympics all year long.

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Mirroring Kindness

This was such a short week; because of a weird ice storm we only had two days of school. I used some of that time to cut out letters for this kindness display.

Got it up in time to kick off next week's Great Kindness Challenge.

We're super excited; the kind acts check lists went home today.

On the way out the door, one of our fifth-grade boys enthusiastically shared that he'd already completed seven of the suggestions! Have you signed up yet?

Those of you who know our school's story know that this year has been a difficult one for our district and town. Hurricane Harvey hit just seven days into the school year; 63 of our Bales students and eleven of our faculty and staff were displaced by those fierce flood waters. Life has been a challenge course for all of us as we recover, rebuild and restore from this trauma. 

But there have been some sun showers, too, like when the Kindness Team from Kids For Peace came to Friendswood to bring donations. They then chose Jet Stream Jax as their national spokesperson for this year's Kind Coins campaign and filmed him on location right here in town and at our school, 

to kick off their annual Kind Coins charitable collection. 

Right before the holidays, we got an email from Jill, co-founder of Kids For Peace, asking if they could build a play space to help our school family heal. Such a humbling, beautiful surprise; that virtual challenge course that we've been on in real life is going to be built in real life just outside our gymnasium, a generous gift.

For us. 

A rainbow in our cloud. 

To help us heal.

Here's a sneak peek. 

Weather permitting, the ribbon cutting will be Wednesday, January 31st. I can't wait for the Kindness Team to come back to Texas and help us put the finishing touches on the Peace Garden that's adjacent to the challenge course. 

Good Morning America plans to feature Kids For Peace this coming Thursday to showcase the Great Kindness Challenge family edition, so be sure to tune in. Additionally, Hasbro Children's Fund will be matching all #KindCoins donations up to $100K, so if you haven't donated yet, now's a great time.

Incredible kindness of epic proportions, just because they can;

A brilliant Sketchnote from Julie Woodard.  

that's the kind of kindness that I promise to always intentionally mirror. 

  

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Kindness Rocks

Happy new year. Today I'm still energized from yesterday's afternoon with the school counselors in Spring Branch ISD. What a satisfying time I had with them, leading a self-care learning session. One of the counselors gave me this affirming feedback: You are the kind of presenter I love, the kind that makes us feel. 

It made my heart super happy.

On another note, many of you know that Hurricane Harvey put a damper on a lot of activities last semester, including our annual Pinwheels for Peace project, which we had to cancel, so this week I've been partnering with our Art teacher as our learners painted their Kindness Rocks for our alternative idea, a Peace Garden. What a blast it has been, to watch this new teacher in action working with and coaching our students.

One of the things I really appreciated after our first class with fourth graders was when Ms. Giamfortone asked the students this reflection question: What's something that you noticed about someone else's rock? What a beautiful way to elevate empathy as students work alongside one another to paint a positive peaceful message on their rocks. 

At the end of the month, our families will gather to paint a rock.
We are so grateful to Grace Church School in New York for their generous donation to help us build our healing Peace Garden!

Click the image to go to the Kids For Peace website. 

Then today after school, I grabbed the character cam and caught our Student Council in this kind act, tying blankets to warm up our friends in Houston who are struggling with homelessness. 

StuCo leaders invited our students to each bring in 25 cents ... 

and ended up collecting $200 in quarters to purchase the fleece.

Our donation of 50 blankets will undoubtedly warm a lot of hearts.

I know that watching these kindness ambassadors certainly warmed mine.

On the personal front, I put my #oneword2018 {vulnerability} to the test when we took our family skiing last week.

The reason we went was to celebrate the boys having both graduated this past year. They wanted an experience instead of a party, so we planned this trip to give downhill skiing a try. 

The snow that started to fall on the afternoon of our last day on the slopes was a huge scoop of ice cream on our celebratory cake.

If you've ever gone skiing, then you know that it's not as easy as it looks. You have to go into it knowing you're going to fall down. Maybe a lot. It's a good idea to take a lesson and then it's another good idea to go slow to go fast. It's a lot like life, really, and it made me feel really vulnerable. But we persevered and made it off of the bunny slopes onto the green slope aptly called Rookie.

It was an amazing adventure and everyone at Monarch Mountain was so courteous, patient and helpful.

We also carved out time to visit St. Elmo,

highly regarded as Colorado's most enchanting ghost town.

Look closely and you might just be able to see a face 

in that upper lefthand window. 

So haunting.

So quiet now.

Enjoy this mindful moment and see.

I can't help but wonder what kind of character lessons

the teachers (and life) taught in this abandoned school house.

I hope that 2018 brings fresh, new, one-of-a-kind adventures.

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Cut Out For Great Things

Tonight I'm excited because tomorrow I'm putting these festive

cookie cutters on the tables at our holiday staff meeting

as table decor that teachers can take home with them.

They were super fun to make, in part because my husband helped me. 

We found the cutters on sale at Michael's and just added the tag. 

I gave one to my friend Melissa today,

and she asked if I found this idea on Pinterest.

It was kind of cool to say that I thought it up all by myself.

Then today, I decided to bring this beautiful image to life

onto a life-sized wall display outside of our learning space.

I was pretty happy with how it turned out,

especially when one of my fourth-grade boys asked

if I meant for the colored papers to be like the ornaments.

As we count down the days to our holiday break,

we're working with intention to make our days count.

To show caring to one another.

To be joy-makers.

To remember the less fortunate by donating gifts for the Blue Santa drive and by bringing in quarters so that our Student Council leaders can buy fleece for blankets that'll warm up our friends who are homeless.

Photo courtesy of Nancy Gruener at Gilmore Elementary

On Friday afternoon, I got to help Kate Campbell, a junior at FHS, distribute these donations from her Books And Blessings campaign. Because of her generosity and love, every student who was displaced in Harvey's floodwaters four months ago got to shop for seven new-to-them books to help rebuild their personal libraries. Such a blessing to see the joy in their eyes as they got to choose their new treasures. My favorite was the fourth-grade girl who chose a book for everyone in her family. 

Sharing is caring after all.

In this afternoon's mail, I got a beautiful Christmas card

from a Twitter friend up in Canada,

with a $5 bill asking me to pay it forward.

I think I'll use it to buy the baking supplies we'll need to make 

a second batch of cut-out sour cream sugar cookies . . .

and take them to a family whose kitchen was destroyed 

by the hurricane and isn't put back together just yet.

Thank you, Roman, for being an example for kindness;

you make our world better!

And in case you haven't heard Sheryl Crowe's tribute 

to Sandy Hook yet, click {here} to listen to The Dreaming Kind.

Yep, we are definitely cut out to do great things.

What do you have planned to spread joy tomorrow?

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