Christmas Song Lyric of the Day:
Rocking around the Christmas tree / Have a happy holiday / Everyone’s dancing merrily / In a new old fashioned way
Brenda Lee / “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree”
10:06PM.
I spent the majority of today with Jonathan and Curry helping them shop and wrap presents for their guys. By “their guys” I mean the men in their Agape group homes. Jonathan, Curry, and Jonnie’s twin brother, Benjamin, took over running the group homes once Bobbye, Jonnie and Benjamin’s mother, passed away. I think she’d be really proud of everything they’ve done, along with their staff, in taking such good care of the men who reside in their group homes. Agape provides shelter, food, activities, and services for mentally ill adult men. Agape also provides clothing and various other creature comforts as needed. Today I saw firsthand the thought and effort that goes into picking out gifts based on what each individual resident wants for Christmas. Jonnie, Curry, and I finally got around to wrapping gifts starting around 4PM. Benjamin joined us later on, providing much needed help. While Jonnie, Curry, and I ran to the mall to pick up a few more gifts and grab a quick dinner, B even stayed behind to keep wrapping. Each resident (there are about 30) gets a few presents, not just one per. To give you an idea of all the presents that needed to be wrapped, take a look:
Some of the finished presents:
Keep in mind these photos represent about half the total presents the guys will receive from Agape; Jonnie and Curry will be shopping for the remainder tomorrow. The residents will also receive gifts from some of Agape’s board members. This is but one of the many, many things Jonnie, Curry, Benjamin, Shea, and the other staff members take care of for their residents. Which is why I know they are making Bobbye proud every single day.
In personal news, let me say how unbelievably relieved I am that the New York City transit strike is now over. Rich and I were almost in complete panic mode thinking we would lose the money we put into our non-refundable plane tickets. Lesson learned: from now on, I’ll pay the extra $30 or so per ticket to make them refundable through Orbitz. Althought I bet even Orbitz didn’t see this type of problem arising even in their worst-case scenario planning.
