Learning to give back

I always knew that when I became a Mother that one thing I would stress to my children was, giving to others less fortunate than themselves. Lily has always been great at this. Before her birthday and before Christmas she sorts through her toys and finds things to donate to the kiddies of the world with much less than her and in some cases nothing. For Christmas one year she emptied out her piggy bank, after noticing a catalogue that had come in the mail, and asked me to send it to WACAP as a Christmas present for her Grandpa. In her Grandpa's name she donated milk to feed the children left behind in the orphanages in China. On another occasion she and a few of her China sisters held a lemonade stand to raise money for HTS. As for Rosie, well lets just say she is still a work in progress but I think and hope she is starting to understand.

Our 2 favourite charities are WACAP, our fabulous adoption agency and Half the Sky.

Half The Sky is the organization that runs the Social Welfare Institute in Maoming City, where Rosie spent the first twelve months of her life. They teach orphanage workers all over China how to care for the babies in their institutions. Rosie received wonderful care under their watchful eye and we are forever indebted to them.

A little over a week ago we received an email from HTS asking us to video tape the girls singing a particular song and send it in. It is part of their, Great Hall of Beijing, event for Childrens Day on June 1st. Lily leapt at the opportunity to help out. After many "takes" we finally got the tape done and uploaded. We received an email confirming that both the girls will be part of this monumental event, You can read about it here.

As most of you know I am not the kind of parent that brags about every single thing their child does. If my girls are great at something fabulous but if they aren't I am not going to tell them they are. Lily's singing voice has always been questionable but recently her singing has been sounding like, just that, singing, rather than a cat who's tail it stuck in a lawn mover blade.

She had to sing whilst wearing headphones and as you know when you wear headphones you cannot hear yourself. Oy Vey! And as if that wasn't enough she had to sing in Mandarin, Oy Vey again. She tried so hard and was really proud to be participating but not so proud of how she sounded. I sent it in anyway.

Rosie wanted "in" too so we taped her but as you can see hers was edited to a few seconds as she suffers from stage fright.

I can't wait to see the finished DVD of the whole performance.

You didn't really just listen to my girls wailing did you? Thank you, you are to kind!