Aunts and uncles are the “fun version” of parents, without the responsibility of actually being parents and enforcing rules and discipline. My aunt and uncle are this exact definition.Growing up with them was an absolute adventure. For example, my two-year-old birthday party was cow themed, so my aunt and uncle showed up in a cow costume, my uncle, the head of the cow and my aunt, the tail, prancing around my backyard. Another year, during Halloween, we found them standing on our roof dressed as Superman and Superwoman, capes flowing behind them in the wind. For Christmas, they always give us gifts that encourage my siblings and I to play together and use our imaginations. They’ve given us a homemade puppet theatre, a wooden seesaw, wetsuits, a GoPro, and even connected a zip line between two trees in our backyard. They constantly keep us on our toes. My aunt and uncle bring excitement and imagination to our family and they finally decided to share that gift with other children through Hope Houses Workshop, Inc..

I remember walking into my aunt and uncle’s garage around Christmastime one year to find their garage covered in sawdust, nails, hammers and wood. They, along with the help of their two girls, Alex and Isabelle, had been making dollhouses. Their family started making dollhouses in 2010. The effort and their reach with children and families grew each year. They wanted to continue reaching more and more children and couldn’t do this with their current space, their dollhouse models and practices and their resources. They also couldn’t do this without real partnership with agencies already serving children less familiar with intact family. Last year they decided as a family to start a buy-one give-one business; this gave them the framework and resources to expand their reach. They named the business, Hope Houses Workshop, Inc. and launched it this month. Hope Houses Workshop, with the promise that when someone purchased one of their dollhouses, another would go to a little kid whose childhood had been interrupted by loss or trauma. My aunt and uncle believe that childhood is a brief window of time upon which life is built and without an intact family, life can be hard. That’s why the mission and foundation of Hope Houses is that “Family is Key.” These dollhouses can help unlock a child’s brightest future through play, opening their imaginations to what family life and family rituals might look like. For these unsuspecting children, the gift of a Hope House is a love they can actually see and feel, something real and beautiful that belongs to them. The more I see and learn about Hope Houses, the more admiration and respect I have for my aunt and uncle and the calling they bravely pursue as a family. If you’re looking for an amazing Christmas gift for a child this year, I highly recommend visiting the Hope Houses’ website (http://hopehousesworkshop.com) and supporting this amazing mission.