52 Weeks of Service: Smile Train

I should probably clarify that for our family's purposes our acts of "service" won't just be the get-your-hands-dirty type of service but will also include giving, random acts of kindness, and probably a whole bunch of other things!

So for this week (#5) our family decided to give a small donation to a great organization called Smile Train in honor of our friend Gavin. Gavin is about 3 months younger than Eli and I met his mom, Angel, at one of my mom's groups. Gavin was born with a cleft lip and palate. He had surgery at 3 months to repair his lip and again just a few months ago to repair his palate. His is such a sweet little boy and is doing wonderfully! It's my hope that Eli and Gavin will be friends as they grow. The pictures above are of Gavin before and after his lip repair. I can't take credit for the "before" picture, but the "after" picture is one I took during a photo shoot of Angel's boys last fall.

In honor of Gavin's 1st birthday his family is doing a fundraiser through Smile Train to try to raise $250 to provide a cleft lip/palate repair for a child in need. Personally I am so very thankful for my children and their two beautiful smiles so if we can do something (even something small) to help another child get a new smile then we want to help! So just today Lily and I went to the website and read through and talked about Gavin's story and then decided together how we might help!

I thought that some of you might be interested in helping too! Even giving one dollar would be such a blessing (not just to this family but even more so for the child they want to help). If you are able to donate to help give a child a new smile please check out Gavin's Smile Train site at
www.smiletrain.org/goto/GavinSeavey