This post brought to you by cookies. {Wednesday Files}

My life for the weeks before Christmas has been fueled by cookies.  First there was the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap (which was awesome).  Then there was cookie making for my coworkers.  And finally there was the Gigantuous Cookie-Making Fundraiser of 2012.

Remember when I told you about my students and their response to so many of my loved ones losing homes during a typhoon?  Well, it touched me.  Deeply.  Here were little people so eager to help, to do something.  They offered their money; they offered their toys.  When I shared that we couldn't really send toys to people overseas without houses, they offered something bigger: their annual Christmas gift exchange.

Yes, they gave up their gift exchange for people they didn't even know.  Instead of buying presents for their secret pal, they decided to take that $5-$10 and use it to make cookies.  To sell.  To raise money for those in need.

Beautiful, isn't it?

And so we set out to do that.  We made cookies, I found family and friends to buy a box.  Then they wrapped, packed, and shipped the cookies, along with a homemade thank-you card, to everyone who helped them.  The cookies might have been a little lopsided, and the boxes were definitely a little haphazardly packed, but they did it.  And in the end, they raised $1,650 for the little island of Peleliu!  Yes, you read that number right, One thousand, six hundred fifty dollars.

WOW!  What the hearts of these young ones can teach us if our big, grown-up hearts are willing to listen...