YMCA Angel Tree dinner

We had a dinner date on Friday December 7th at the Jamestown YMCA (where in the past 2 months Chris has lost 7 pounds and Kimberly a whopping 15!). It was the donor and recipient Angel Tree Dinner. Kimberly grabbed an "ornament" from the tree for a "6-year old boy". We then got more info than we ever received in any previous years' gift donation we've done anywhere. Shoe sizes, clothing sizes, explicit gift lists, the works. Knowing that our friends and family are comparably well-off, our little boy won out volume-wise and received quite the motherload of Christmas gifts from us.

After Chris got out of work, he raced home to pick up Kimberly and the broccoli cheese casserole we were bringing. Upon entering and writing out our name tags, whom do we see? Dakari, our little 6-year old whom we got gifts for. Adorable. (He's 2nd from the left in the above photo.) Mind you, recipients do not know who their donors are, unless the parent requests to get in contact with us. So when we stood there in line for dinner and saw how precious Dakari was, our hearts just leapt. What coincidence! What luck!

So we make our way to a table, and who sits right next to us? Dakari's family. We chit-chat, we mingle, we offer to take a family photo with their camera. Chris then takes his digital camera out to take some pictures and say that we'd leave them at the YMCA's front desk for them when we print them. Dakari is enamored and poses like a Hollywood star on the red carpet. I then ask if he'd like to take our camera and "work the room". His eyes light up and he is gone for at least 45 minutes. 40 or so of some of the best (albeit blurry) impromptu pictures we have ever seen in a long. long while result.

Dinner finishes up, and with all the picture sharing and modest tomfoolery, Darkari's family and the Gordons are in fact the last to leave. We exit with a warmth in our hearts that is unmatched, knowing that we could give a 6-year old little boy the Christmas of a lifetime. As far as Dakari knows, he just had dinner and some fun with the camera of these two strangers at the local YMCA.

It may in fact be just the best Christmas yet for both Dakari AND the Gordons.

Here are some shots from the evening, with two self-portraits by Dakari in the mix: