One of the restaurants we like to eat at was having a drawing for a big Christmas stocking full of toys, candy, gift cards, and everything else you can imagine. While we were there eating one night the waitress gave each of the boys a card to fill out to enter the drawing. I filled out Nathan’s card, but accidentally put Josh’s name on it so I had Josh fill out his card using Nathan’s name.

A few weeks later we received a phone call letting us know that out of ALL the names entered in the contest, Nathan WON! Josh immediately remembered that HE was the one who signed Nathan’s name on *his* card (LOL) so he thought that meant the stocking should have been his (LOL).

In the picture above you can see a red sack on the left and a stocking on the right. They were BOTH completely filled to overflowing with things! It was an AMAZING amount of stuff. Now, our boys don’t need more “things” so we considered it an extra special blessing and passed the blessing on to other children who might not be getting any toys and things for Christmas. All the way home Nathan talked about giving this toy to this friend and that toy to that friend, but we finally convinced him that all of his friends were going to be getting things for Christmas and we needed to give it to an organization that would then give it to kids who might not have very many toys. He and Josh each picked a couple of things to keep and then all of the rest of the things were either already given away or will be given away.

We’ve always tried to teach the kids that we want to be a vessel that the Lord can pass things through so we were excited for Nathan to have a very tangible way to see this in action.

Here my mom is trying out one of the toys they decided to keep. She doesn’t like her picture taken so this works (LOL). This little thing made an impression of her face on the opposite side (LOL).

The WHOLE group was there to see Nathan gather up his stocking and all of the things he won. We stopped there for dinner after one of Josh’s basketball games for with my parents, Tim’s folks, my brother, and Amanda & Skyler. I think we were also celebrating my birthday that night with dinner!

Here are Tim’s folks with Nathan.