Weekend of Service

We ended up doing a weekend of service.  This reminded me of our church in Illinois that had an organized "Weekend of Service" every September where the church body went out into the community and did service projects instead of church.  (The church has left the building!)  We ended up doing that here, but we did get to go to church on Sunday too.
Celee's Girl Scout troop was signed up to pick potatoes at First Fruits Farm.  This farm donates either the proceeds from produce or the produce itself to local food banks and charities.  But, it had rained way too much the day before and the machines couldn't get into the potato field so we ended up picking pumpkins instead.  The girls had so much fun picking and sorting pumpkins!  And they each got to pick one at the end to take home.

Gwyn's youth group went to "volunteer" at Baltimore Station after church.  Baltimore Station is a home/resource center for veterans who are struggling with addictions, PTSD, re-adjustment issues, and other problems when they return home.  I say the girls "volunteered" because our job was to watch the Ravens game with them and have a party.  It provides the vets with some social interactions and normalcy that they may be lacking in.   So we went down and and had a football party with them.

Gwyn also discovered that she could climb into this ball catcher at the playground next door.  She is a climber!

Lyla didn't get left out.  We were told by an acquaintance that a local farmer was done with his pumpkin fields and was going to plow it under in three days.  If we wanted pumpkins we could go get some.  So we went.  The kids kept saying they were done and then someone would decide to go get "one more."  Then everyone would go get one more.  Soon we filled the mini-van with as many pumpkins as we could and still have a spot for me and five kids to sit.  I don't know how I didn't get a picture of this, but it reminded me of pictures you see from third world countries where all you can see through a car's windows are some kind of produce or farm animal.  Even after we dropped the neighbors kids off with all their pumpkins we still had over a hundred pumpkins to put in our yard and decorate.  We keep giving them away to friends who come over and we still have piles here and piles there.  I like to think of it as a physical reminder of "as you give, so you shall receive."