Week 41: Focusing on My Family

This week's Kindness Countdown activity took my daughters and I on an adventure, and finally got us out of Wisconsin (three trips to visit family have been cancelled so far this year...this is the longest I've ever stayed so close to home).

You may recall back in Week 30, our family rescued a chicken who had stopped laying and was going to be "used" a different way on an active farm. This week, our family grew once again as I turned my focus for kindness onto my daughters (and some drivers behind us on our journey): we adopted two guinea pigs!

My daughters are very responsible and have taken over the majority of caring for our chickens in the past year. So when my youngest found a pair of guinea pigs in Michigan back in March, during the first week of quarantine, I paid attention and opened my heart to their request to adopt them (despite my fairly firm No Rodent policy).

After a month of walking past an adorable picture of those two fuzzy friends my girls continuously left up on our desktop monitor, after they put together a presentation, complete with facts, a budget, and answers to all of the questions I asked, I said we could contact the rescue to collect some more information.

We were told the guinea pigs had been bounced around quite a bit in their short lives and were looking for their forever home. My daughters loved that they were a rare Swiss breed with longer hair they could care for. I loved that the sparkle that had started to fade with all of their cancelled 2020 plans once again shown bright whenever they talked about adopting them.

I eventually said yes.

Monday morning, my girls and I drove a few hours to New Buffalo, Michigan to meet up with the guinea pigs' foster mom.

If you've ever driven through Illinois and Indiana, you know that paying tolls plays a major part in roadtrips. Kindness Countdown Bonus: On this trip, whenever there was an employee in a tollbox, I paid double and asked them to comp the car behind me. It's always nice to see smiles in other cars on the road. (:

We arrived in town early so we could spend some time at the beach and explore the cute streets of New Buffalo (pro tip: get a fresh strawberry shake from Nancy's if you ever find yourself nearby).

And then we made our way to the meet-up place and met our new family members...and oh, how big my daughters smiled! Which made me smile!

Our drive home was full of more double-paid tolls, lots of thank yous from my girls, commentary on every move made by the guinea pigs (who they have since named Pepper and Spinach), plans for introducing them to their new cage, making toys, and growing vegetables to feed them for snacks.

Everyone is settling in pretty well. The girls are spending lots of time bonding with their new pets who are receiving no shortage of love. My daughters have something positive to focus on that won't be cancelled.

And the sparkle in their eyes is shining bright. <3