A new holiday

For Christmas, I gave A a book titled 101 Things You Gotta Do Before You're 12! Some of the "things" include:

1. Go to a demonstration, protest, or rally
2. Join (or start) a club or team
3. Conquer a fear
4. Plan a dream trip
5. Make a time capsule
6. Run (or play) in the mud
7. Give Shakespeare a chance
8. Enter a crazy competition
9. Start a new family tradition
10. Make up a pen name or spy name
11. Meet or correspond with someone famous
12. Make your own...

Number one on the list is: celebrate a holiday you don't usually celebrate. We did some online research, and A decided to celebrate Earth Day this year.

Our family has never really formally recognized Earth Day before. I mean, we do keep all of our plastic Wal-Mart bags, and we either reuse them or we take them to the recycle box in the store. I also bought some of those reuseable shopping bags. The theory was that I would keep them in the back of my van and take them with me into the store each time I shopped for groceries. In order for this to work, one must remember to take the bags back to the van after unloading the groceries. And if the bags actually make it back to the car, one must remember to take them into the store for the big shopping trip. Thus, the large amount of plastic Wal-Mart bags that are accumulating in my laundry room.

So, for Earth Day 2009, the Donwerth family will make the earth better by:

1. Holding fundraisers at our schools to raise money for water filter straws for WaterIsLife.com. One school principal has challenged each classroom to raise money to buy one straw. The other principal is asking each student to bring $1 so that they can wear a hat on a special day. We would like to see 100 lives spared from waterbourne illnesses.
2. Attending Disney's Earth movie. For each ticket purchased during opening week, Disney will plant a tree in the purchaser's honor. We took a friend with us, so 5 trees will be planted because of us.
3. Collecting paper for recycling. We throw away a fair amount of paper, and each of our schools has a paper recycling container in the parking lot. (If we can find out where to recycle plastic, we can save empty 2-liter bottles, too.)

It's not much, but it's a start. I think the next step will be to conserve electricity and water. But that may take until Earth Day 2010 to master!

The snitch

Mom: "How much do I owe you for the T-ball shirt and hat?"
Coach: "Twenty dollars. You can get it to me later."
Mom: "I'll bring you cash after my husband's payday."
Son: "Yeah, my mom doesn't have much money."
Coach [smiling]: "None of us do these days."