our helping hands

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Last weekend our whole family to able to help in a service project at a local state park. It was a gorgeous sunny day and we had a wonderful time. We were able to work alongside our COUSINS and friends from church! It was a great time!

Here's cousin I and Jackson near their big pile of sticks. Our job was to pick up the off-shoots & sticks that our other helpers cut off from the bases and bottoms of the trees. We also helped put mulch around some newly planted trees.

These boys were HAPPY to be where they were! (The inside story: They were trying to make the BIGGEST pile of sticks because they were pretending there was a HUGE prize for the winner. We'd have a pile near the tree we were working on, but they insisted on carrying their sticks BACK to THEIR pile, so they could build it bigger. They kept doing this until their pile was almost out of sight, then they were convinced they needed to start ANOTHER pile. They made about 3 of these big piles.)

I had to get a shot of the back because these vests are so cool! Really! I also love that you can tell how SMALL these boys are that are helping. Pretty cool.

Here are their big sisters HAPPILY at work and building their own pile.

Elisabeth thought it was pretty funny that she got to put this BIG BRANCH in the pile and it's BIGGER THAN SHE IS! "Take a picture!" she said.

The kids worked really hard for about 2 hours before we had to stop for a little snack.

After about 3 1/2 hours of good work, the kids were exhausted and we were finally done, so we got to have our picnic lunch by the playground! Jackson picked Swiss Rolls & Capri Suns for our special treats for the day.

Levi RE-discovered that he LOVES watermelon! He ate 2 or 3 pieces of it!

It was a wonderful sunny day and it felt great to work and be outside all together! Let's do this again!

The final headcount for our service project was 340 people and we clocked over 2000 hours of service! We were all stationed according to our ages and abilities and spread over 8+ areas of the park. Some of the other work our fellow workers did was to: fix/re-install lampposts, paint benches in the amphitheater, paint signs & posts, outfit a horsetrail, and the list goes on and on and we got almost all of it done!  How wonderful!

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