How can I volunteer with two little ones?

I've had the itch to volunteer/help out in some way since one Sunday this past spring. At the time I was teaching 4th grade and being a mom before and after school hours. At the time the easiest way to help was to open up my check book.

My volunteer efforts.

 Now that I'm staying home with my boys and we're living off of one income, the last thing I want to do is write out a check! I haven't found a way to take my boys with me to volunteer, so I needed to find something that I could do at home and I came up with baking. Our church has a cookie & coffee time between the two services each Sunday morning and goes through a lot of cookies.



I signed up to bring five dozen cookies and made a batch of Ginger Crinkles and Snickerdoodles earlier this week. Then I spotted the above cookie dough mix at Target. Of course, I had a coupon for $1 off of 2 bags and each bag was priced $1.79. So for $2.58, plus two eggs and two sticks of butter, I was able to make almost four dozen cookies.



I'll be experiementing with volunteering outside of the home with my boys on Friday, December 2nd. We'll be ringing a bell at one of our local Hy Vee grocery stores on the behalf of  The Salvation Army and the local food pantry our church supports. At least 60 families in my community are fed at this pantry every single day. This statistic opened my eyes and my heart to look at the little red kettle a in a different way. I never thought I'd be volunteering with The Salvation Army, especially not with a 4 1/2 year old and a 2 1/2 year old. It should be interesting!

I had 80 cookies and then my sweet boy asked for one. How could I resist?