Saturday, April 11, 2009

A very volunteering week

Last Saturday there was a Texas Trash Off in Euless. Basically volunteers come and pick up the parks and roads in Euless for a couple of hours and for that you get a danish for breakfast before picking up, a t-shirt, and a buffet lunch at Incredible Pizza when you get back. Needless to say there was not a shortage of vonlunteers. Nate's cub scout pack did this as a scout project.

Nate and I went to Bear Creek Park. I was really impressed with Nate - he really did his best to pick up, even going through brier bushes to get trash. We went down to the creek to pick up and man there was ALOT of trash down there. We filled up our first trash bag in about 200 feet. The only thing we left behind was a trash can dumped in the creek (it was smashed almost flat so I was pretty sure it was empty). The people in the park were real grateful too. At least half of the people in the park we passed stopped and thanked us for picking up, it was really gratifying.

After a couple of hours we went to Incredible Pizza for our Pizza lunch. Nate really loved it and has been wanting to go back ever since.

Thursday there was a Senior lunch that a group of us at work volunteered to help out at. There was almost 1500 Senior citizens to about 150 volunteers. After setting up there were platers and servers. Platers put all the food (mashed sweet potatos, puree'd stuffing, green peas, ham and a salad) on a plate and the servers took the food out and served drinks. Then we broke down all the tables and chairs and put them all away while another group swept up.

I could tell the seniors really appreciated it. Most of them dressed up in their Sunday best and they all had a really good time.


Saturday, April 04, 2009

Cub scout campout Saturday and Sunday

Saturday was a slower day for several reasons. The planned hike was ONLY 1.1 miles but the catch was it was over 600 feet up a mountain. I made it almost to the top but we got to a last large dip/climb and my knees (still hurting from hopping around on Mount Scott) just hurt too much to keep going. So like Moses on Mount Nebo I sat and watched the rest of the pack make the last climb and took pictures of them at the top.

When we got back down we made a quick stop at a prairie dog town then, while all the other kids went to Mount Scott Nate and I went to Lawton (about 15 minutes away from the park) to the local WalMart. I went for two reasons: First for a knee brace and some deep heating aspercreme (by this time my left knee hurt to bend it and the right was a little better - but not by much. The second reason was that Nate really was not eating. He was eating the oatmeal squares I had brought but the only time he ate what was fixed was Friday they had plain rice as a side (so he had a bowl of rice with his oatmeal square). So as soon as we stopped at WalMart we went into McDonalds and Nate inhaled a 10 piece McNuggets.

Sunday we had a simple breakfast (pop tarts, fruit bars) so there was no dishes to wash. Packed up the tent and supplies and headed home.