Sammie’s 12th Birthday Party RAOK!

We celebrated May 6th with the boys for Sammie’s party.  She got a lap top computer, we ate her favorite foods pizza, corn, watermelon and root beer floats.  Quite a combination! 

A few weeks later we celebrated with friends at RAOK (Random Acts of Kindness) Birthday Party.  Instead of gifts her friends brought new or used children’s books and at least one gift card with an idea of what random act of kindness we could do with that card. 

The girls came up with some great ideas!  It was a wonderful day and we just loved every minute.  Laura came with me to make sure I didn’t go insane with 5 little girls in my car for a whole day.  She was a gem!

Our first stop was the hospital- where we visited the child life department of the Children’s Hospital- and donated books to the play room, water and chocolate to the nurses and post it notes with encouraging messages for the bathrooms. 

We also taped quarters to a vending machine on the floor Spencer was on a few years ago.

One of the girls wanted to take gift cards to the library and give them to the librarians.  They were so surprised and confused- the general theme of the day. 

We went to the grocery store and took 3 gift cards to give to the people behind us in line.  This was the girls favorite one.  We had one woman say she gives acts of kindness at least once a month and she has never gotten it back until that day.  It really made an impact on the girls.

Sammie picked Taco Bell/Pizza Hut for lunch.  We gave the cashier a gift of the makings of s’mores.  He was probably the most confused and flustered.  Laura saw him run out to his car to stash his gift though so we guessed he liked it. 

We bought a families lunch at Steak N Shake.  So fun.

Taped popcorn to Red Box machines- love this idea.  The girls all had such great ideas to contribute to this day.

At Starbucks we raced in, startled the poor man getting ready to pay for his coffee, and plopped a gift card down on the counter and paid for his coffee, the person behind us in line’s coffee, and left 2 more cards with the cashier to treat the next 2 people to come in.  It was pretty dead in Starbucks that day- it was a hot day!

After Starbucks we went to St. Louis Bread Co. and did the same thing.

They loved tapping on car windows in the drive through at McDonald’s and DQ to hand out gift cards before people paid. 

This lady’s face in the red car says it all.  After this photo she started waving and going nuts giving us thumbs up signs and just so happy. 

We didn’t get a photo of the park- we handed out water bottles to those walking around the lake and a DQ gift card to a family fishing. 

This party was a great success!  We all felt the fun and joy that comes from giving service.  The people we served that day were so happy and surprised and overwhelmed and impressed by Sammie’s sweet idea of a RAOK birthday party.  I was too actually.