Toys ‘R’ Us (Photo credit: Jeffery Simpson)

I have experienced one of the nicest, kindest gesture I may have ever seen. There is a person at our church who wants to remain anonymous, decided to give some of our little kids in our Sunday School $25 gift cards to Toys R Us and Target.

Some?? How many is some? Well…almost 70. Thats right, 70 gift cards split between Target and Toys R Us…. and thats not all…. The church school director informed us that there were several Giant (local grocery chain) gift cards. I do not know the dollar amount of those gift cards. I know is that they were “extremely” generous.

We received our gift cards in the mail. The gift cards were accompanied by a nice letter explaining there was no obligation to pay if forward. But if we did pay it forward, the church wanted to know what we did…

So what did we do?

I loaded up my two kids, and my Toys R Us Coupons and we went to Toys R US in Annapolis… during the Christmas madness… YUP… I knew what I was walking into….and my youngest was already cranky… But nonetheless … off we went…

My girls love Barbies… L-O-V-E Barbies. So I explained to my oldest that we were trying to get the most out of our money, so lets get the Barbies that were on sale. I am trying to turn her into my ‘lil bargain shopper. She found some Barbies that were $40. So she’s a beginner on the bargain hunting. So I explained in more detail that we were wanting to find the cheaper Barbies….

When it was all said in done, coupons used, gift cards redeemed, and I chipped in too… we had 6 Barbies, and 12 Barbie outfits. We gave all these Barbies to my Wife’s school. Their school adopted a couple families that were not having a christmas. Some bought food for Christmas dinner, toys and clothes for kids…

It doesn’t stop there. We discussed what we were doing to some of our closest friends. They decided to do the same thing as us. When it was all said and done, my wife had a good load of toys to take to her school for these kids that would not have had a nice Christmas, or a Christmas at all.

I wasn’t really looking forward to go to Toys R Us a few days before Christmas. Who would? Doing this with my oldest and explaining the importance of paying it forward to my her really made it all worth while.  She got it. She wanted to make sure we got the Barbies that she thought the kids would play with. It was awesome!

On a side note…While at Toys r Us,  I got my youngest a “I can Be…a President Barbie” Ava picked out the Dark Haired Barbie (I have no freaking clue what her real name is… they ALL are Barbie aren’t they??) …. So she decided to change her name to Sarah. Yup… Sarah…

So here we are, a dark haired President Barbie with a new name of Sarah. So I did what any other Dad would have done… I taught Ava to have her Barbie/Sarah say ” I can see Russia from my house” and have her do some “fancy pageant walking” …. I am bad. I couldn’t help it..

Did you pay anything forward? Did you donate to Toys for Tots?