Seth's Birthday Project.

This year Seth turned 5. We decided that we would do big birthday parties for 5, 10 and 16 to avoid the "bigger party every year" syndrome that seems to spring up all too easily. Our family has also been trying to downsize and simplify our lives a lot since we got so overwhelmed in TX with small children and our military moving lifestyle. Seth and Gavin sold a lot of their toys in order to buy fresh water for children in Africa. We talk a lot about doing hard things around here. Things we would want someone to do for us, if we couldn't do it for ourselves. So with having a big birthday party we didn't want to re-accumulate all the toys we just got rid of. Plus Seth was getting a lot of gifts from family. So I prayed for a special birthday project for him and found it: Books for Rota. I read about this project in a magazine, and you can read more about it at HERE.
Seth and I talked about it and he agreed to collect books for Rota for his birthday project and we prayed. He asked God for 100 books. That is a lot for a 5 year old to imagine. I made him a sticker chart with 100 places on it. We counted after his party and stickered up the page. We got about 106 books (with more on the way.) He was so excited to see that God did what we asked. He got to put his sticker sheet in the Memorial Box. We will be mailing the books at the end of the summer, and two other groups of grown ups may be doing this project as well. All because he was willing to share his birthday with kids who don't have as many books as he has. We are very proud of our new 5 year old!!!
Here are all the kids and the books they brought to Seth's party: