Children are our most valuable natural resource.

First, I have to apologize for not blogging sooner. I have to admit I was naively shocked at how sad the last several days have been. I truly thought September 26 and the days surrounding it would be full of joy. And there I was, guiltily trying to shake off looming sadness.

In the last several days, I have received so many e-mails from people of beautiful things they have done.

And while my intentions with this blog were to make all of you feel good, it ended up being all of you making me feel better.

Thank you so much for your kind actions and words.

SO! Let's start sharing some stories, shall we?!

The below stories are both about children, and are from 2 different people. The first, a mother; the second, a young fiance.

The boys and I were talking about what we could do to "help" and where our interest lies (this was MONTHS ago). Ethan being the lover of animals wants to send money to every charity he sees on TV for the abused animals. Since we don't have money to send to every charity he sees on TV, I was looking for ways to donate time. Due to his young age none of the local shelters will let him volunteer - he is only 6. We went to my aunt's house who has horses, and after we took the boys riding, they helped feed the horses. I spoke with my aunt, and we now help brush and feed the horses every other weekend. It will help her out and Ethan in particular loves it!

Aiden is nearly 4, and all about the environment. He makes sure everything is recycled! He is all about driving wisely (planning errands to use the least amount of gas). Well, again there is not much offered for kids his age, but I did find one opportunity through www.greatlakesadopt.org that was age appropriate. I guess every year they have a day in the spring and another in the fall to clean the beaches of the Great Lakes, it all happens from 9 am to 12 noon in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan. The boys and I volunteered on the to help clean at a local beach. Since the attention span of a 4 year old is not all that long, we lasted about one hour. We managed to clean up 4 lbs of trash that included plastic bags, newspapers, cigarette butts, pens and straws.... I received an update after the event and found out there were over 2700 volunteers at 48 sites in Illinois alone - up from the 1800 volunteers they had last year. What was nice is all ages can help with this project and we cannot wait to do it again in the spring to get the beaches ready for swimming!

And our second story is from Blog: http://jenandbritt.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-sweet-it-is.html

I had a great teacher in high school. His name was Father Stapp. Yes, he was my religion teacher. Others in my high school would probably roll their eyes at this, but I really did take a lot away from his class.

He was unique. He taught us about religion through a different lens. He taught that God lives in the smallest acts and things. He showed us pictures he took every day.

He showed me how beautiful dandelions could be or how beautiful a dairy cow could be (his favorite at the time was named Sue). He could take an average rock and talk about it like it was a diamond. He had something special, to see beauty in such average looking things.

One lesson that I carry in my life from Fr. Stapp is to buy lemonade at every lemonade stand ran by little kids. He told us it does not take much time or money to make a big impact.

Matt and I did this the other day. We were in a hurry to drive to our house and then down to Tucson for the University of Arizona football game. We drove by the lemonade stand at first and I knew we should stop to buy some. On the way out of town, we drove through again and bought two cups of lemonade and tipped them. The two boys were so proud of their effort and of their profits.

It was a simple act, but it was a great act, even though we dumped the lemonade out of sight of the boys. I am so glad we took the time to go back to their lemonade stand and pay them 2 dollars. They proudly told us with our money they made 11 dollars that day.

I am happy I can still live out some of Fr. Stapp’s simple, yet great life lessons. Just imagine if everyone could do one small act of kindness everyday...