Every year a photographer friend of ours Earl Harper and his wife Doreen, host a Toys for Tots party at their studio. They require everyone to bring a gift to donate and they have a keg of beer, wine, and lots of appetizers and desserts. The US Marines come in full dress blues and they take all the toys at the end of the night to donate to needy families.

We took Sennet to Costco and had him pick out a toy to give to Toys for Tots. We explained to him that some kids didn’t have a lot of money and that it was nice for other people to help them out at Christmas and buy them a present so that they could have a Merry Christmas.

He picked out a big yellow Tonka truck, and we told him he could take it down to the party and give it to the marines. He wanted to know what a marine was. I explained that they were a little like bomberos (firefighters) and a little like policia (policemen) and a little like pilotos (Blue Angels pilots). He wanted to see pictures so I pulled up some images on the iPad. He was excited about their uniforms and patches.

Throughout the week he kept pointing at the Tonka truck up on the shelf and asking when we were going to give it to the “submarines.”

Last night was the party so we all went down to Earl’s and Sennet got to give his toy to the marines for the Toys for Tots program. He was pretty jazzed about it and then immediately went to the tables of food, grabbed a handful of cookies and shoved them in his mouth. He ran over to me and yelled, “Daddy, I love cookies!!”

Sennet also got to play air hockey for the first time and like most things physical he was quite good at it!