12/09/2025
Giving Back Day 8: Sunshine ☀️
This…was a lot.
Way more than we had anticipated.
She’s a 14 year old girl in our town.
Her teachers say she has a personality of pure sunshine ☀️
She is developmentally delayed.
She has never learned to care for herself however…because her Mom has an intellectual disability as well.
Showering, washing laundry, cleaning, organizing, cooking…these are tasks that are not easily manageable.
Her teachers were setting her up to have showers at the school and she was soooo excited to see they had supplied pretty soaps, shampoos, and girly shower things…because she’s never had them before.
We went to their home to meet them and they are the loveliest family…full of friendly smiles!
Mom has worked at the same job for 17 years and makes $16/hr. After rent, and gas…well, there’s nothing.
Dad is just as lovely! He was recently laid off but is really good in warehouse stocking positions and is currently looking for work.
There is also a younger sister who greeted us at the door with the biggest smile ☀️
We stepped into their home and…it was a lot.
It was a lot.
After we chatted in the living room, getting to know them a bit, they said yes to letting us help them out however we could.
Glimpsing though the girl’s bedrooms was hard to see. I’m pretty sure the girls have never had clean sheets on their beds.
Actually, there were no sheets.
I instantly thought of our youngest daughter’s room as a child…she slept on a princess canopy bed with Princess and the Pea bedding and had a dresser full of clean clothes.
How could this little girls’ bedroom be only blocks away from our home?
How is this fair? How is this happening?
Pop cans and garbage. Grime and empty dressers. A lot of mess.
In the kitchen, the dishes were stacked so high you couldn’t see the counter or stovetop.
Keep in mind…this family is challenged in ways most of us are not.
Executive functioning is the brain’s “manager”: it controls planning, decision making, starting a task, and staying organized.
So, for someone who is challenged this way, they may struggle with knowing where to start, how to sequence the tasks (gather the laundry, wash the laundry, dry the laundry, put the laundry away), staying focused long enough to finish, feeling overwhelmed with too many steps, and not knowing where to even start if they don’t have consistent help.
The teacher that had told us about this little ray of sunshine in her school…suggested we could get her a few pretty things like manicure and a haircut but once we met this little family we knew we could help more.
With the parent’s blessing….we sent the whole family out to breakfast and then off to Galaxyland for the day (the girls had no idea this amusement park even existed and they were so excited!) ☀️☀️
Our priority became the girls…we wanted to give them a clean, bright space for them to have when they came home from school so we took on a bedroom-makeover, for both of them.
We had a team of friends help us with this! Every single one of them took this family under their wing to lift them up.
The first shift was cleaning and tossing out the garbage (with permission).
There was another crew building bedroom furniture while the first wave of painting went through.
While we were waiting for the paint to dry, we tackled the kitchen and washed dishes, organized cupboards, cleaned out the fridge, and sorted through endless food-bank bags.
It seems…like two little girls can only eat so many cans of green beans and peanut butter.
It was a lot. It was a lot.
The second wave of painters went through.
The girls’ bathroom was scrubbed down. New toothbrushes put in place.
Pretty shampoos set out.
The laundry was heaped up and taken to the laundromat.
The new bedroom furniture was put in place, the bedding put on, the pictures hung, the rugs laid out, the desk set up.
Their Christmas Tree was built and lit up in their living room.
The family came home…and the girls were so excited!! They were squealing with excitement and jumped onto their new beds!
Mom and Dad were stunned…and so thankful ❤️
They got to meet our volunteers and said so many thank you’s…and wished everyone a Merry Christmas.
Sounds like a fairytale, right?
The reality is that even though we gave them a brand new space it could very likely end up in the same scenario as before.
We know this. We struggle with this.
And then…one of our brand new staff members, who is incredibly generous with her heart, offered to work with this family for two hours a week for two months.
Teaching the girls to tidy, make simple dinners, wash the dishes.
But their first task will be to go tobogganing because the girls had no idea what that was either…the priority will be to bring joy, light, laughter, and smiles.
~ Amanda & Trevor Wilhauk
If you would like to help this family too, they could use gas gift cards, and grocery cards to Safeway or Superstore (drop them off at our shop antime and we will deliver them for you ❤️).
~ Because of the insanely cold weather that we are about to get…we are moving our 12th Day of Giving: Community Christmas, from Central Park to our front sidewalk!! Join us for a free Cheese Smokie, a fire pit, and a visit with the Grinch between 5:00 - 7:00pm as we celebrate our last day of giving for 2025! Dress like you live in Alberta lol
~ All Brickhouse Window donations must be back at the shop for December 10th so we can get ready for our deliveries, thank you! We do still have a few more stories up in the window ❤️
