Random Act of Kindness

I just want to recognize a stranger today.

This morning I woke the kids up early (I HATE doing this!) and rushed like mad to get them ready alone and get ready for mass. The rules are if the roads are red or black (from snow) one hour prior to mass, there will not be mass. Mass starts at 9. At 7:45 the roads were changed to red. I discovered this at 8:30 as I was about to go scrape the ice off.

So, what did I do? Told the kids I was going to lay on the couch and rest my eyes. I was soooo tired for lots of reasons. An hour later, I woke up haha. Felt refreshed. I went and shoveled some of the snow, on the stairs and to my car, laid ice down, heated up the van and deiced it, and came back in. We were all already dressed from getting ready for church, so grabbed jackets and headed to the BX. I needed silver or gold thumbtacks, some medicine, and something else i couldn't remember...

We got there. Of course, they only had colored thumbtacks. Boo. I almost couldn't find the medicine I needed, but thankfully did. I couldn't remember what the other thing was, but had this feeling it was near the cleaning supplies or the hardware. Ah ha! An adapter. (To plug my 110v lamp in to a 220v outlet) Then we went to see if there was any playdoh, and like always, there was none. My poor kids live a deprived life thanks to the BX. Yes, they sell it off base, but it's expensive. Yes, I can order it online, but I always have other priorities. Yes, I could make it, but I'm lazy.

Soooo, I knew I had a treat in the back of my mind, but we needed lunch. (NO judging when you hear what we ate today please and thank you!) So we got Anthony's (Disgusting to me, yummy to kids) pizza for lunch with orange drink! The kids were so excited. Poor, deprived kids. As we're eating, a woman comes up to me. She'd been sitting at the table next to us. She said she's sorry, she'd been eaves dropping, and just wanted to compliment me on how I was parenting, that I was doing such a great job, how I was talking to them and dealing with things and teaching them and that you just don't see that kind of parenting much these days. I said Oh, thank you so much! God bless you! She went on to tell me she was a child development something or other and said "I hope you don't mind, but I'd love to buy your kids ice cream." and handed me money to treat them to some ice cream! We said God bless you to each other, and the kids and I all said thank you as she walked away. I was so touched by her sweet act of kindness!!

So I took the kids for their treat- a movie! We've seen it several times, but Tangled was playing at the theater, and it only cost $7! It was a great treat and they loved the experience of going to a movie theater. It was a lot of fun. And we ended the movie with ice cream at Baskin Robbins thanks to the kind stranger.

We came home, and I let the kids do a craft, then being such a great mom, let them watch another movie while I called my best friend in FL, whom I hadn't talked to in over 6 months. Great ending to the day. :)