Ding Dong Ditch 'em

Let me start by saying that I wish I would have had my camera with me...

The last month or so has not been pleasant for my in-laws...Tim's mom and dad have been dealing with this nasty little eye virus that has caused them to be home-bound, temporarily blind, extremely uncomfortable and highly contagious.  Dad A had it first and toward the very tail end of the contagious part of it, Mom A got it, despite her incredible efforts not to.  They're not used to being trapped at home (at least they didn't have it at the same time, so they could help each other and still get out a little)...they're retired busy-bodies with lots of things going on.  It's been a challenging month to say the least.  They wouldn't dream of asking for help, even though they'd jump if someone else needed any. 

The whole virus is almost done raining on their parade.  Sunday, we left church and spontaneously Tim says, "we should take dinner to my parents."  Now, it's already 1pm and we haven't eaten and they live about 30 minutes away, but that is the kind of generous and thoughtful guy my husband is.  We decided it would be a totally fun thing to do and we could certainly wait a little longer for our own lunch (providing we picked up a little snack to tide us over!)  To the grocery store we went without a clue of what would be a good choice considering Dad A has diabetes and food allergies, it won't be eaten until the evening, and it needs to be already prepared.  Jakob and I browsed the aisles for a few minutes before deciding on already-made deli meals of pork, corn, mashed potatoes and gravy.  Perfect.  And for dessert?  Something with sugar or without sugar...hmm.  We found the most perfect solution:  individual sugar-free apple pies and an individual serving of apple crisp--sugar-full!  Rounded out with a bottle of sugar free vanilla coffee mate and another yummy seasonal flavor too, we were done--and then we found the perfect Husker re-usable grocery bag to tote it all in.  (Oh, and frosted sugar cookies for our snack dessert before lunch.)

We drove to their home and decided that we would drop the package off without staying since none of us was really too excited about the prospect of getting their nasty bug.  "We should ding-dong-ditch-'em" one of the boys said.  (My first thought was "How do you know what that is?????)  Well, it would be kind of fun to be sneaky about it, so we did--ding dong ditch 'em and drove off, leaving the Husker bag on the doorstep with a card that said nothing but "We love you" and each of our names.  We barely made it down the street before our phone rang.  "Thank you!"  "You're welcome"  It was a nice surprise, especially since they thought Halloween pranks were starting early!  It took almost our entire afternoon, and we had plenty of other things to do, but it was so fun to do something so spontaneously for someone else.  Charity is something so good to teach our children!  I'm sure they'll remember this random act of kindness even more since there was doorbell ringing and running involved!  :)