Ring My Bell

I think for about forever I've wanted to ring the bell for the Salvation Army at Christmas time.  For me that is the true start of the Christmas season when the Salvation Army bell ringers come out and this year every time we went somewhere Em got to put money in the bucket.  While we were in Floriday Paul volunteered to be a bell ringer at the mall and when I said I wanted to do it he signed us up to do it together.  Today was our day and it went great!

Of course since we had to kind of get up and get going this morning Em slept in.  I woke up at 8:20 and she was still sleeping.  We had decided we wanted to leave our house at 9:15 so we had to wake her up to get her ready. 

Being the domestic goddess that I am I still whipped up some blueberry pancakes for breakfast, we ate, and off we went.  We weren't sure how Em would do as we had signed up for a 2 hour shift and that's a long time for a toddler to do anything. 

I don't want to brag, but her behavior was nothing shy of perfect.  She rang the bell, she played with her doll, she sang songs, she wished people Merry Christmas and told them thank you when they put money in the bucket.  It was awesome.  At the end she was getting sleepy so she sat quietly on my lap the last 15 minutes of our shift. 

All in all if you want to rank in the cash donations get yourself a little kid.  People loved her!!  We decided that this was the start of a new McArtor family tradition.  Next year we are really going to tug on people's heart strings and put the girls in matching elf costumes. 
Merry Christmas!!!

Volunteering is hard work!