30 for 30

So I'm turning 30 next month. In 30 days, to be exact. I've been trying to think of all kinds of ways I could commemorate such a huge event in my life (and, yes...30 seems really mega huge to me). Somewhere I heard about someone celebrating their 30th by doing 30 random acts of kindness on their birthday. It inspired me to consider doing the same. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it would probably be impossible for me to get 30 random acts squeezed into one day. Such is life when you are a stay at home mom - I don't have a whole lot of human interaction during the day, except for my family and, well, it felt a little like cheating to count things like "I wiped my kid's butt" and "I wiped my other kid's butt" as random acts of kindness. That's just part of my job as a mom. Plus there is really nothing random or kind about butt-wiping.

 So I hatched a plan. Instead of 30 random acts squeezed into one day, I'm going to spread the randomness and kindness over 30 days. Each day leading up to my birthday, I'll be looking for opportunities to do a RAOK. I'm SO looking forward to doing it and I really hope it opens my eyes up to the opportunities I have around me to help others. I'm ashamed to say it...but being the 8th kid of 9 has kind of crippled me in a way. I grew up having people mostly doing things for ME instead of me doing things for THEM. As a result, I'm sometimes kind of oblivious to people around me that are needing help. I'm hopeful that 30 days of making an effort to be aware of the needs of others will help me become more service-oriented.

 So here I am at the start! It's Mother's Day today, and I've enjoyed having my family pamper me. It was also a great opportunity for me to reach out to some moms that may not have been given the attention they deserve on this special day. The kids and I picked out some flowers to take to our neighbor for Mother's Day. Thomas made her a card and insisted we take cookies as well. I also dropped off some chocolate and a card to a mom I know from church that I thought could use a little extra love today.

 I'm hoping I can make a quick post each day to document the RAOK I've been able to do. I've been searching for ideas and found this website. Who knew there was an entire website dedicated to ideas for RAOK? Well, there is. Which is good because I can already see myself on Day 5 thinking, "uh...okay...now what?".

 Let the countdown begin!