We love giving Secret Santa gifts! This year we bought Oreo cookies instead of baking treats (well, it's hard to find things like flour, sugar, baking powder, etc. here) to give to the nine bus helpers our kids have. We also got six more little packages that we gave to our neighbors (that live on the same floor as us) when we went Christmas caroling.
I have been wanting to make cupcakes for a long time to go and deliver to the people that live near the Arabian Sea by us. However, when baking day arrived I couldn't find my mini-cupcake liners so I wasn't able to make enough full-size cupcakes this time. We gave these to all of our apartment security guards, elevator operators, janitors, etc. We wore our Santa hats when we passed these out and got lots of smiles.
Our school distributed plastic shoe boxes to the youngest sibling in each family. If we wanted to we could fill them up for the Save The Children campaign, then wrap and return them. We filled ours with toothpaste & a toothbrush, soap, shampoo, Oreos, gummy bears, dried apricots, and a coloring book with markers and crayons. Hiram happily took it back to school. (Unfortunately, we missed the big Christmas Tree lighting at the Grand Hyatt Hotel where our school presented 400 shoe boxes. Leonard was out of town and I wasn't brave enough to battle Mumbai traffic with 6 kiddos by myself. Hopefully, we'll make it to the event next year.)
When we caroled to our neighbors we were only able to visit with 3 of the 6. We left the other 3 treats outside their doors. Later that evening our closest neighbor, stopped by with these yummy chocolate suckers for us. We thought that was so sweet!
(We also gave gifts for the 12 days of Christmas for the 5th year in a row. This is one of my personal favorite traditions! I want to keep it a secret though, so no pictures :).
I love to give and hope I am always able to.
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