Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Mormon Helping Hands - Saturday in the Park


This past Saturday, the 27th of April, we participated in a service project cleaning up Raccoon Creek Park, a local State park. It was a multi-state organized service project. I believe the goal was to have members in all of the state parks in our region. Pretty cool! I really wanted the girls to be excited to serve, so we talked up the event all. week. long.

I talked about how they could wear gloves (which I went on a manhunt for... ended up scoring some at Michaels, on clearance for under a dollar! Sweet!), get to wear these neat yellow vests that said "The Church of Jesus Christ of Later-Day Saints" on it,  get to use gardening shears to cut branches, help haul branches and leaves away off the trail, and so many "cool" things they could do that day. We even brought up a sled for the girls to haul things away on, but didn't end up using it.

Well, as successful as we are at getting up early and out of the house on time, we arrived about an hour into the service project. There was still plenty to do, but all of the "cool" vests I had talked about all week, luckily we found one that we could use for a picture... the only real picture I took there. 

(Abby {my lil' cancer-patient-looking-girl} and Sarah)

It was really fun getting out in the fresh air, and mud, and doing a little work.
Our wards job was to help clear a trail path (even cut the trail out on the side of a huge hill!).
We were clearing away wild raspberry bushes, that were very prickly, but the girls were great about being careful and helping in any way they could.
I loved watching my lil' ladies looking for ways to work.
Sarah was really involved in finding things to do, Abby did a great job too, but one slip and fall in the mud and she was done.
I'm happy to report that there were no tears from either of them though.
They were happy campers the whole time.
Zak was even a real trooper too!
(which really surprised me because we couldn't really let him walk around and explore as we were right next to a pond)

It turned out to be a really fun family day.
After working at the park, we headed over to the blue slide playground to let the kids run around
and get good and tired. 

We even topped it off by renting Just Dance 4 for the Wii and going home and playing it while dinner was being made (even more insurance for a good nights rest).

It was a Perfect. Saturday!

Even if Ryan and I rented the Hobbit and both fell asleep on the couch ten minutes into the movie (which we started around 9pm).
Guess we pretty much insured a good nights sleep for us all. ;)

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