Saturday's Service Spotlight! I love to share something AWESOME that people have done, and this is a story I happened upon this week on Facebook. I love it! Such great examples of service and showing love for our fellow humans with NOTHING expected in return. The article is called "The Business 9 Women Kept A Secret For Three Decades".  A few things that struck me as totally awesome and as things I can learn from:

1. These ladies sacrificed. They took money and resources from their own household and personal allowances to do this. Often service does take sacrifice.
2. I love that couponing was one way they saved the money they needed-see it can really save! :) 
3. How awesome that when the ladies got "caught" by their husbands, the husbands wanted to join in and help! LOVE that...Those ladies did so much good, but think of how much more they could have done if the couples had been working TOGETHER for 30 years! 
4. These ladies do not want any credit for this-still! They are not identified. They are not seeking attention of props-they are simply looking for ways to help others!

If  you haven't read about this amazing story go read "The Business 9 Women Kept A Secret For Three Decades" now! I hope you find it as heartwarming as I did!

Hello friends! Boy I have not been on here much! I have just moved across the country and I am doing my best to settle myself and 5 kids into a new place. I have also been trying to figure out what to do with my blog. I wondered if it was time to retire it altogether or maybe just revamp. I have decided to go with the revamp. I am still a mom of five looking for a great deal, I still want to share great deals, product reviews and other great content. However, my blog has had some changes.

While in Omaha, I focused a lot on local grocery deals, store sales and local free or cheap activities. I tried to do the same when I lived in Scottsdale, AZ last year but found it was difficult. In that area, grocery deal match ups and couponing were not of interest. I think some of it was backlash due to the perception of couponing people now have thanks to shows like Extreme Couponing. Some of it was the fact that most people living in that area do not need to coupon. Whatever the reason, it was a fail-my blog numbers dropped dramatically.

The place I live now is a small town. It does not have the same kinds of options for pricematching and groceries that big cities have. I am still learning how to shop and save money here. Luckily for me there is a FANTASTIC blog locally that is helping me learn. If you are a local or are planning to visit Grays Harbor at any point, make sure to check out Annaliese over at Grays Harbor Deals. Her blog is awesome! And I know her personally-she is awesome too!

Most of my readers live in Utah and Nebraska. I have a good group in Arizona, and I found I have a growing number all over the country-actually all over the world. I learned in looking at my blog stats, that the posts with the most hits are usually my travel posts. Awesome! Reviews and travel posts are the ones I like to do the most!!!

So, here comes the new plan (which is a work in progress, so bear with me): we are bringing back the weekly series! We are continuing to review and give away products, and we are focusing on deals that are not quite so local (that's not to say I won't post local stuff-I will sometimes). 

My former Weekly Series looked like this:

• Sunday: Sunday Savings: Newspaper round up
• Monday: Mommy School Mondays 
• Tuesday: Tuesdays Travels
• Wednesday: Beckee's Best of Omaha Grocery
• Thursday: Thrifty Thursdays (Random thrifty tips on a variety of topics)
• Friday: Weekend Warriors: Daycations
• Saturday: Service Spotlight Saturdays
• 
  

There is a service requirement that goes along with many local junior high and high schools as part of their graduation requirements. I know this is the case in other areas as well, and since we go back to school in about a week and a half here, I thought I would throw out a few ideas of service for the kids to do for their service requirement. Here are some of the thing I thought of:

• Look around your neighborhood for people that might need help-can you mow a lawn, watch a neighbors kids, help clean a house? If you see a need, offer to help fill it (for free). 
• Ask local schools if they need any help with their activities-ask at your school (they likely have lists of things going on you can volunteer for) or contact local elementary schools and ask what they have you could volunteer for. I am PTO president at my kids' school and we always use kids to help run things like our carnival and other activities-it helps us get enough volunteers and helps the kids get their hours in.
• Check at local churches for volunteer opportunities.
• Talk to local charitable organizations (Red Cross, JDRF, etc) and see what volunteer opportunities they may have.
• Local theaters often need volunteers to act as ushers.

There are so many places you can help if you just look around and find them. And let's be honest, who is going to turn away FREE help? Offer to serve people and they are likely to accept. Now I must admit here that I am one of those people that has a hard time accepting help, but when a kid in my neighborhood called and said "I need to get some volunteer service hours in for school within the next month, could I come help you clean around the house or watch your kids sometime?"  I let her come help out!

What other ways can these kids find volunteer opportunities?  Please leave comments if you have more ideas.

I have a friend, Amy, whose husband works where my husband does and their young daughter, Annabella (4 at the time of her diagnosis, 5 now) was recently diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes. Amy and her family and friends are taking part in the JDRF's Walk to Cure Diabetes in Omaha August 7. Please read below to see what Amy and her husband wrote on their JDRF page, and then go to the page here and help if you can! Thanks for your support!

Dear family & friends,

In honor of our 4 yr old little girl, Annabella Marie Poterucha, our family will be taking part in JDRF's Walk to Cure Diabetes (team name Bella's Butterflies) in Omaha on August 7, 2010. We will be a few walkers along with one-half million other walkers across the country.

Annabella was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes on March 22, 2010.Her diagnosis of juvenile onset diabetes was a huge shock to our entire family. With this disease, Annabella requires multiple daily injections of insulin, numerous daily finger pokes to test her blood glucose, and meticulous monitoring of her daily food intake in efforts to keep her alive and well. Her daily insulin injections are not a cure...it's life support.

Most people know someone with diabetes, mostly Type 2 (90% of diabetes population has type 2, 10% happens to be type 1, which is more rare) is a completely different disease, with a totally different pathology. Type 2 is due to lifestyle and mostly obese, sedentary adults. These people are able to control their diabetes by: losing weight, diet, and taking oral medications. On the other hand, type 1 diabetes, which is an autoimmune disease, affects innocent, young (mostly children) people, whose T cells attack their beta cells that produce insulin within their pancreas. In other words, their body's defense mechanism recognizes their pancreas as foreign, and attacks it; which leads to the destruction of the beta (insulin)producing cells which allows normal metabolism and body/blood gas exchanges. Therefore, type 1 diabetics are completely dependent on insulin injections for the rest of their lives. Before the discovery of insulin by Banting & Best in 1921, prognosis was very poor, and these people often only survived for a few months after they were diagnosed.....less than a 100 yrs ago it was considered a terminal illness.

I'm amazed at how far the treatment for this illness as come, and yet, there is so much to be discovered in order to find a cure! Things are constantly advancing thanks to those that support this cause and to finally finding a cure for autoimmunie type1 diabetes! For the first time, scientists are predicting that we CAN expect to see a cure well within our lifetime!

Now, more than ever, you can make a crucial difference. Even joining us on our walking team, "Bella's Butterflies" would be very much appreciated! Together, we can make the cure a reality!

Thanks!
Dr & Mrs. Joseph & Amy Poterucha

I have a friend, Amy, whose husband works where my husband does and their young daughter, Annabella (4 at the time of her diagnosis, 5 now) was recently diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes. Amy and her family and friends are taking part in the JDRF's Walk to Cure Diabetes in Omaha August 7. Please read below to see what Amy and her husband wrote on their JDRF page, and then go to the page here and help if you can! Thanks for your support!

Dear family & friends,

In honor of our 4 yr old little girl, Annabella Marie Poterucha, our family will be taking part in JDRF's Walk to Cure Diabetes (team name Bella's Butterflies) in Omaha on August 7, 2010. We will be a few walkers along with one-half million other walkers across the country.

Annabella was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes on March 22, 2010.Her diagnosis of juvenile onset diabetes was a huge shock to our entire family. With this disease, Annabella requires multiple daily injections of insulin, numerous daily finger pokes to test her blood glucose, and meticulous monitoring of her daily food intake in efforts to keep her alive and well. Her daily insulin injections are not a cure...it's life support.

Most people know someone with diabetes, mostly Type 2 (90% of diabetes population has type 2, 10% happens to be type 1, which is more rare) is a completely different disease, with a totally different pathology. Type 2 is due to lifestyle and mostly obese, sedentary adults. These people are able to control their diabetes by: losing weight, diet, and taking oral medications. On the other hand, type 1 diabetes, which is an autoimmune disease, affects innocent, young (mostly children) people, whose T cells attack their beta cells that produce insulin within their pancreas. In other words, their body's defense mechanism recognizes their pancreas as foreign, and attacks it; which leads to the destruction of the beta (insulin)producing cells which allows normal metabolism and body/blood gas exchanges. Therefore, type 1 diabetics are completely dependent on insulin injections for the rest of their lives. Before the discovery of insulin by Banting & Best in 1921, prognosis was very poor, and these people often only survived for a few months after they were diagnosed.....less than a 100 yrs ago it was considered a terminal illness.

I'm amazed at how far the treatment for this illness as come, and yet, there is so much to be discovered in order to find a cure! Things are constantly advancing thanks to those that support this cause and to finally finding a cure for autoimmunie type1 diabetes! For the first time, scientists are predicting that we CAN expect to see a cure well within our lifetime!

Now, more than ever, you can make a crucial difference. Even joining us on our walking team, "Bella's Butterflies" would be very much appreciated! Together, we can make the cure a reality!

Thanks!
Dr & Mrs. Joseph & Amy Poterucha

Five-year-old Hayden Cullimore needs a liver transplant. Even with good insurance, his family has been told to prepare to pay up to $200,000 out of pocket. To “Help Hayden Heal,” his family has organized a some fundraising events including a 5K walk and run on July 17 and a benefit concert on July 19 at 7:00 p.m. at the Layton Amphitheatre. The concert will feature the local Utah famed trio Mercy River, nationally acclaimed Broadway tenor Dallyn Bayles (Phantom of the Opera), Jessie Clark Funk and recent organ transplant recipient and award-winning pianist Paul Cardall.

Doors open at 6:00 p.m. for the silent auction featuring rare collectible Utah Jazz memorabilia, including autographed shoes from Kyle Korver and Andrei Kirilenko. There will be many unique and affordable gifts from local boutiques and much more. Ticket donations start at $15.00 or $50.00 for a family of up to five. All proceeds go to helping Hayden heal.

For information about the fundraising events or to see other ways you can help please see the “Help Hayden Heal” website here or the The facebook group page here.

Thanks Freebies 2 Deals and ldsliving.com for the info on this story.

Today for Saturday Service, I want to talk about those that serve out great country to keep us free! I believe that though our country is not perfect, it IS a land of the free where my rights are preserved. I know that is because of those great men and women who have fought to make and keep this country free. So, today I want to just thank those who have served and currently do serve our country! As you celebrate this Holiday Weekend, I hope you will remember these great men and women and their families!

Thank you for all your service to our country! I will think of our troops as I celebrate the birth of the United States of America this weekend! Thank you!

I know many areas of the country are suffering from flooding, and here in Omaha is no exception. There are many areas where rivers have floods over int o homes and businesses. The Red Cross in Omaha is coordinating efforts to help flood victims. You can donate time as a volunteer or you can donate money to the effort. Please see the Red Cross Omaha website here to see all the ways to help.

I also saw an article on their website that has tips for how to clean out a flooded house. Please see those tips here.

This was such a popular guest post from a few weeks ago written by my friend Devon that I had to repost it here! Please note the last note from me at the bottom!
I have a friend, Devon Toomey, who is currently going through an adoption of a special angel right now. She has had quite a journey, and when this posts will be days away from picking up her new son. I asked her to do a guest post about her journey for this week's Saturday Service post. Please read on about her experience and read my short note at the end!

From Devon:

It was October 1, 2009 and I was having a discussion with two friends about adoption. I often had these discussions with people throughout the years because I had been quite vocal about my desire to adopt since I was 19 years old. When I was 19, I studied abroad in Mexico for 5 months and I was blown away by what I saw. I had never seen such poverty. I had never seen so many street children without a safe place to call home. It was during this time in my life that I decided that eventually, one day, I would adopt.

So on this nice October afternoon, I was having this discussion again. My friends had brought it up. They wanted to know when we might adopt. They wanted to know from where. They wanted to know the age of the child or if I would consider siblings. They wanted to know it all. I told them what I had told many people throughout the years who had asked us these exact questions. My response was “We want to leave our options open because we truly believe that our child will find us so we want to be open to anything.” This was something I truly believed. I knew that one day, our child would find us.

So later that afternoon I went home and got on the computer while my two sons were napping. I went straight to Reece’s Rainbow, which I had done many times in the past. For the past few years, I would periodically head over to the Reece’s Rainbow site and look at all the waiting children in need of a forever family. Well on that October afternoon it seemed a bit different. Once I was on the site I wasn’t really thinking about where I was going on the site… I didn’t really have an agenda. I truly feel like I was being led… straight to our son. I found his picture on the Other Angels page and I could not take my eyes off of him. Something was different. This had never happened before. I literally could not take my eyes off of him. Then, I did something completely out of the ordinary. I emailed the contact at Reece’s Rainbow about him. Within a short time, she had emailed me back and our lives have never been the same since.

Our son had found us and we would never be the same. My husband came home that night and boy was he in for a surprise. It took him a little longer to commit, about a week, but he too knew that the child in this picture, the child that we knew so little about, was supposed to be here with us.

It is now almost 9 months later and we have been on quite the adoption roller coaster. It has had some wonderful ups and some difficult downs but it has all been worth it. The things we felt would be the most difficult, such as coming up with the money, actually fell into place more easily than we would have ever imagined. This is all thanks to God, all the prayers we received, wonderful friends and family and a plethora of people who blessed us with a donation. With that being said, the things that we thought would not be difficult, such as family support (and I am not talking about financial support), wound up being the most difficult. This has been one of the very difficult downs of the roller coaster and has changed us in a lot of ways. But, just as I stated above, we would not trade this adoption experience for anything. We know that the roller coaster ride is getting us to that final destination of being able to finally bring our son home.

It is now May 23, 2010 and we are leaving in a little over a week to bring our son home. We are so unbelievably excited and we feel so blessed that he has been brought into our lives. We have been changed through this experience and we will never be the same and I say this in a positive way. Our eyes have been opened and we now understand what is important in life and we look forward to changing the world for the better while we are here. Our son’s middle name will be James. We have chosen this name from James 1:27 in the Bible. It states, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless in this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” This has become my passion. This is what I feel I have been called for and I look forward to venturing down this path.

I urge all those reading this post to look at http://www.reecesrainbow.com/ when you have the time. Reece’s Rainbow is a Christian ministry that promotes international adoption of children with Down Syndrome and children that have other special needs, the Other Angels. They have disbursed almost $600, 000 in adoption grants since 2006 and helped over 250 children with special needs find their forever home. It was all started by one woman, Andrea Roberts. One woman. Who says one person cannot make a difference. If you do not feel you are able to adopt or cannot adopt at this time, Reece’s Rainbow has a number of other ways to help the alarmingly high number of orphans around the world. You can sign up to be a prayer warrior (at no cost) for a specific child, or children. You can make donations to the ministry or to specific children or families and all donations made to Reece’s Rainbow are tax deductible. I can say, from personal experience, that Reece’s Rainbow has changed our lives for the better and hopefully it will do the same for you.

Thank you for taking the time to learn about our journey. If you would like to continue with us on this journey, please visit my blog at http://onestitchatatimetoomey.blogspot.com/.

Sincerely,
Devon Toomey

I would like to add that although a lot of donations have been made to help the Toomeys out, they are still short $2500 from being fully funded for the adoption. If anyone wants to make a donation, Devon has a button on her blog, http://onestitchatatimetoomey.blogspot.com/, on the right hand side that says "Help Bring Sean Home". If you click on this button, it will take you to their family sponsorship page on Reece's Rainbow, where all donations are tax deductible.

***Please note that Devon has had to make her blog private, so please email me at beckeesdeals@gmail.com for more information or if you would like to follow Devon's Story.

Saturday Service is all about the things we can do to give back to the community, and this is a way we can give back directly to the teachers and schools. I wish this had been around (or that I had known about it) when I was a teacher! This is a great program to help teachers to do projects in their classrooms that they otherwise would not be able to do.

U.S. Cellular has this "Calling All Teachers" program in conjunction with DonorsChoose.org. Teachers can register on the site throughout the summer and then when school starts, those teachers that signed up can post requests for classroom projects that can possibly be funded. There is more information on this program here.

If you are a public school teacher, I recommend registering NOW at DonorsChoose.org to be designated a "U.S. Cellular Teacher". Then check back in August for more details about submitting your project for funding.

If you are not a teacher but would like to help fund some of the projects, check back in the fall to see what you can help with!

I have a friend, Devon Toomey, who is currently going through an adoption of a special angel right now. She has had quite a journey, and when this posts will be days away from picking up her new son. I asked her to do a guest post about her journey for this week's Saturday Service post. Please read on about her experience and read my short note at the end!

From Devon:

It was October 1, 2009 and I was having a discussion with two friends about adoption. I often had these discussions with people throughout the years because I had been quite vocal about my desire to adopt since I was 19 years old. When I was 19, I studied abroad in Mexico for 5 months and I was blown away by what I saw. I had never seen such poverty. I had never seen so many street children without a safe place to call home. It was during this time in my life that I decided that eventually, one day, I would adopt.

So on this nice October afternoon, I was having this discussion again. My friends had brought it up. They wanted to know when we might adopt. They wanted to know from where. They wanted to know the age of the child or if I would consider siblings. They wanted to know it all. I told them what I had told many people throughout the years who had asked us these exact questions. My response was “We want to leave our options open because we truly believe that our child will find us so we want to be open to anything.” This was something I truly believed. I knew that one day, our child would find us.

So later that afternoon I went home and got on the computer while my two sons were napping. I went straight to Reece’s Rainbow, which I had done many times in the past. For the past few years, I would periodically head over to the Reece’s Rainbow site and look at all the waiting children in need of a forever family. Well on that October afternoon it seemed a bit different. Once I was on the site I wasn’t really thinking about where I was going on the site… I didn’t really have an agenda. I truly feel like I was being led… straight to our son. I found his picture on the Other Angels page and I could not take my eyes off of him. Something was different. This had never happened before. I literally could not take my eyes off of him. Then, I did something completely out of the ordinary. I emailed the contact at Reece’s Rainbow about him. Within a short time, she had emailed me back and our lives have never been the same since.

Our son had found us and we would never be the same. My husband came home that night and boy was he in for a surprise. It took him a little longer to commit, about a week, but he too knew that the child in this picture, the child that we knew so little about, was supposed to be here with us.

It is now almost 9 months later and we have been on quite the adoption roller coaster. It has had some wonderful ups and some difficult downs but it has all been worth it. The things we felt would be the most difficult, such as coming up with the money, actually fell into place more easily than we would have ever imagined. This is all thanks to God, all the prayers we received, wonderful friends and family and a plethora of people who blessed us with a donation. With that being said, the things that we thought would not be difficult, such as family support (and I am not talking about financial support), wound up being the most difficult. This has been one of the very difficult downs of the roller coaster and has changed us in a lot of ways. But, just as I stated above, we would not trade this adoption experience for anything. We know that the roller coaster ride is getting us to that final destination of being able to finally bring our son home.

It is now May 23, 2010 and we are leaving in a little over a week to bring our son home. We are so unbelievably excited and we feel so blessed that he has been brought into our lives. We have been changed through this experience and we will never be the same and I say this in a positive way. Our eyes have been opened and we now understand what is important in life and we look forward to changing the world for the better while we are here. Our son’s middle name will be James. We have chosen this name from James 1:27 in the Bible. It states, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless in this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” This has become my passion. This is what I feel I have been called for and I look forward to venturing down this path.

I urge all those reading this post to look at http://www.reecesrainbow.com/ when you have the time. Reece’s Rainbow is a Christian ministry that promotes international adoption of children with Down Syndrome and children that have other special needs, the Other Angels. They have disbursed almost $600, 000 in adoption grants since 2006 and helped over 250 children with special needs find their forever home. It was all started by one woman, Andrea Roberts. One woman. Who says one person cannot make a difference. If you do not feel you are able to adopt or cannot adopt at this time, Reece’s Rainbow has a number of other ways to help the alarmingly high number of orphans around the world. You can sign up to be a prayer warrior (at no cost) for a specific child, or children. You can make donations to the ministry or to specific children or families and all donations made to Reece’s Rainbow are tax deductible. I can say, from personal experience, that Reece’s Rainbow has changed our lives for the better and hopefully it will do the same for you.

Thank you for taking the time to learn about our journey. If you would like to continue with us on this journey, please visit my blog at http://onestitchatatimetoomey.blogspot.com/.

Sincerely,
Devon Toomey

I would like to add that although a lot of donations have been made to help the Toomeys out, they are still short $2500 from being fully funded for the adoption. If anyone wants to make a donation, Devon has a button on her blog, http://onestitchatatimetoomey.blogspot.com/, on the right hand side that says "Help Bring Sean Home". If you click on this button, it will take you to their family sponsorship page on Reece's Rainbow, where all donations are tax deductible.

Many of you know that my Grandpa died of Lung Cancer when I was young, and my aunt Cathy (pictured above) died of Brain Cancer a couple years ago. I know most of us have known someone close to us that has had or is currently batteling Cancer in one form or another. Each year the American Cancer Society has a Relay for Life, and this year one of my mom's best friends, Jill, is doing it. I thought it would be great to share with you her letter about the Relay for Life for my Saturday Service post. Below is the letter she sent out:

Dear Friends,

This year, I am helping save lives from cancer by taking part in the American Cancer Society Relay For Life, and I’m hoping you will support me.

The American Cancer Society Relay For Life is a life-changing event that gives people in communities across the globe a chance to celebrate the lives of people who have battled cancer, remember loved ones lost, and fight back against the disease. At Relay, teams of people camp out at a local high school, park, or fairground and take turns walking or running around a track or path. Each team is asked to have a representative on the track at all times during the event. Because cancer never sleeps, Relays are overnight events up to 24 hours in length.

In addition to helping people celebrate, remember, and fight back, Relay For Life also helps raise much-needed funds and awareness to help the American Cancer Society save lives from cancer and create more birthdays.

Please support me in my efforts by visiting my personal web page to make a secure, tax-deductible online donation.

Every donation really does make a difference. I know that times are tighter than normal for many of us, but any amount you can give truly can help save lives.

You see, thanks to your support, the American Cancer Society can:

• Help people stay well by helping them take steps to prevent cancer or detect it early, when it’s most treatable
• Help people get well by being in their corner around the clock to guide them through every step of their cancer experience
• Find cures by funding groundbreaking research that helps us understand cancer’s causes, determine how best to prevent it, and discover new ways to cure it
• Fight back by working with lawmakers to pass laws to defeat cancer and rally communities worldwide to join the fight

Each of us has our own reasons for caring about the fight against cancer … whatever your reasons, I hope you’ll choose to make a difference by making a donation online to support my efforts. I’m so grateful to have great people like you in my life who want to see an end to cancer in our lifetime.

Together we can save lives. Thank you.
To learn more about Relay For Life, please visit our Relay For Life information page.

If you are able to donate to thisworthy event, please note that you can donate to Jill's team here, or if you would rather give a general donation you can do that here.

Thanks Jill and Mom for sharing this information for me and for letting me share it with my readers!

There are so many ways you can serve your community! Now you probably all know that I am having my House Party today (in a couple hours actually), so I do not have a ton of time. So, this will be a brief post this week. I just want to say that there are opportunities all around us-churches have programs, the city has programs, school have programs, and there are always service projects that individuals/neighbors are doing. I will focus in specifically on some of these in future blogs, but today I just want to refer you local readers to a great website that Wowt.com here in Omaha maintains of community service/volunteer opportunities. It is a really good list with lots of places that need help/lots of ways to help! Check it out here.

As I mentioned in my blog about the weekly series, I am a bit of a freak about saving money and getting myself a great deal. But I am also a huge fan of giving back to the community and to the individuals that shape us and the world we live in. I want this series of posts to be a place where I can post about service opportunities, or I can spotlight great examples of service.

It being Mother's Day tomorrow, I thought I would start this series by writing about a couple of ladies that have been serving my husband and myself for our whole lives, my mom and my mother-in-law. Both of these great ladies have not only served their families, but they serve in church, and in their communities. They are both excellent examples of service that I want to share with you.

Let's start with my mom, Rochelle. My mom is ALWAYS doing some sort of service, whether it be playing the piano for the high school musical, serving in church, raising 4 kids, or helping my brother collect toys for the local hospital. She never stops helping people and she never thinks of herself first. She serves others to a fault. I should mention that she comes by this honestly as her mom, my XiaXia is the same way! NEVER thinks of herself until she has helped everyone else first.

Growing up I sometimes did not realize how much mom sacrificed to do things for us. I just assumed she would always play the piano for all my auditions and she always would end up volunteering to play the piano for the shows as well. But guess what? My mom did not just play the piano for my auditions, she played for and helped prepare myself and all my friends for our auditions as well. It was common in our home to have weeks on end of practice after practice of my friends and I preparing for auditions well into the nights, and my mom would sit at the piano through all those hours and just play over and over and help us get better and better.

Thanks mom for always serving me, my friends, the community and really anyone you could! Thanks for being an example to me and my siblings!

Now, I am going to sound repetitive here, but my mother-in-law, Anne, is equally unselfish in her service to her family, her community, and her church. Whether coaching sports for her kids teams, stopping by the neighbors house just because they seemed like they might need a hand, or serving and raising 6 great kids, one of which turned out to be the great man I married! Like my mom, she never thinks of herself first, and she comes by it honestly as well. Grandma N is a great example of unselfish service and like my XiaXia, passed that on to her children.

I am Greek, and some parts of My Big Fat Greek Wedding are really true in my family, but what I learned when I married Wes was that you do not have to be Greek to live in that "big fat family" world! They are a tight knit clan on both sides, and there are a lot of them! Anne always includes all the family in everything and watches for ways to serve them. She is loving to a fault and would do anything for her family. She extends that service to her friends and neighbors as well. I have never seen someone so dedicated to serving people that try not to accept the service. She WILL take care of people's needs whether they like it or not.

Thanks Anne for raising a great man for me to marry, and for teaching us all from your constant examples of service!

I would be remiss if I did not mention my grandma (dad's dad) and Wes's grandma J (his dad's dad) here as well. They both are wonderful examples of service and have taught it to their children as well. One of my earliest memories of service was of participating in a fashion show to benefit the American Cancer Society with my grandma.

Thanks to all the moms in my life for showing me how to serve and give back. I hope to be like you all someday!

Readers, please leave any comments you would like to about how your mom's serve! I would LOVE to hear about the moms in your lives as well!