Six Months of Service

The service FHEs have been a little out of order and sometimes pushed around to different months, but we are still plugging on. That said, I haven't documented any of them in a timely manner, so you get six months smooshed together. Really that just means a lot of pictures at once. (lucky you.) But we'll try to make this hold some form of order.

We left you back in March. Remember?

APRIL

In April we were supposed to go sing at the hospital. I will freely admit that this never happened because I wasn't quite sure how to go about it. Do you just stop in anywhere and sing? Won't we wake people up? Are there rules against loud noises in the hallways? I was just too worried, and so I put it off until I realized that I should just move on.

MAY

In May, we chose to plant flowers or a tree. This came with some of the same waffling from the month before. Can you plant flowers in an undesignated area? Would neighbors want flowers to show up, making them suddenly responsible for a growing thing? (Clearly I need to think these things out in more detail next year.) I finally opted to go the safe route and we planted a tree in our own backyard. That constitutes service to our neighbors, the earth, and anyone who moves into our house later. (No, this is not an announcement that we are moving...or even thinking about it.)

I failed to get pictures the day we planted it, but I snapped one today.

Which proves that we haven't killed it yet. :)


JUNE

This month we chose relatives that live a little farther away and wrote letters. I was hoping to get some good pen-pals going for the girls, but they are probably still a bit young, and let's be honest...I don't think I ever kept good contact with my pen-pals. I think frequent communication via letter writing is actually a skill that some can't master. But we tried.

JULY

I finally got back into gear this month. We wanted to deliver nice notes to random individuals. So we bought some free ice cream coupons from Macey's and put them around town. The girls really had a good time.

There was no rhyme or reason to our dropoffs. We hit Target.

The library.

Fire hydrants.

And crosswalks.

I love how the girls hair would go flying out behind them as they ran away.

Tyler found some good spots too.

The trickiest one was the pharmacy because we had to sneak over between cars, but we succeeded.

It was a really fun project.

  
AUGUST

We chose to pick up litter in August. (Ahem...maybe September.) I thought for a while about where to go. (See? More waffling.) I finally decided the school was a good place, although it always seems pretty clean to me. We actually found plenty of litter to pick up.

The girls were great, and scurried around finding every last scrap.

Robyn led the scout party and her bag filled up quickly.

Although June pointed out that Robyn's bag looked more full because she got the larger items, but June had picked up just as many or more...they were just smaller. (Thank you June for pointing this out.)

Dad was not as great at picking up. But he was highly skilled at pointing out trash to be cleared. And Pearl was happy to do her part.

We finally had filled our bags. And then Dad did some ninja moves?? I can't remember what he was doing here.

We rewarded the girls with time on the playground. They are so cute.

Holy cow, look at this girl fly.

 

June was playing this game where we gave her multiple colors and she tried to touch them all. I think this one was 3 reds, 1 green, 1 blue, and 1 yellow. She got 'em all.

So marked another successful service project.


SEPTEMBER

Lastly, or most recent, we were supposed to make salsa and deliver it. However, I came across an Apple Butter recipe that I wanted to try and ended up with several extra jars. So we delivered that instead.

I find that the kids really enjoy giving things to people. I hope this is always the case. Look how happy...

Actually, everyone had a smile.

And so ends six months of service. I am still pleased with our progress, and I hope to come up with some other creative ideas for next year. In fact, if you think of any, please pass them along.