Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Join Hands Day

Most of you don't know, but long ago I volunteered to be a Youth Service Club leader for Modern Woodmen of America (a company Dan and I buy our life insurance through). Each month my youth service club (including my children) does service throughout our community. Last September we fed the firefighters in our area. One year we planted a tree in honor of the firefighters who lost their lives in the September 11th tragedy. Another month we cleaned a neighborhood park. We often donate blankets to the local women's shelter. Anyway, this past Saturday was Join Hands Day, which is done nationally, every May on the first Saturday of that month, by all Youth Service Clubs for Modern Woodmen of America. We decided to beautify one of the elementary schools in our community and plant flowers and bushes around it.
I usually have about eight kids who help every month. This activity was so fun, because the kids really got into it. All of the kids helped plant flowers and even started picking weeds because they thought they detracted from the beauty of the flowers they planted.It only took us about 45 minutes, but we had the school looking pretty nice. Jackson was the self designated waterer and ended up with most of it all over himself. Thank goodness it was a nice day!

In the background of this bottom picture you may be able to see two white police cars. They never actually came over to see what was going on, but they stayed for quite a while to make sure we weren't actually trying to destroy the school. When we finished the kids ate yummy cupcakes and cookie bars, and our Modern Woodmen Agent gave all of the kids prizes for coming. All in all I would say my kids left feeling like they did something useful that day!
You don't have to buy life insurance through Modern Woodmen to come to our youth service club activites. It has been really rewarding to do this with my kids every month, and anyone is welcome to join us.

2 comments:

jessica said...

Sounds cool. Did you just show up and do it as a surprise...or was it planned out? You should have gone and asked to cops to help instead of just sitting and watching. :)

SD and EJ said...

I thought Jason's first song was okay. Not his best, but not as bad/weird as the judges thought. I thought his second song was really good, but of course all the judges heard was that he forgot his lyrics. EJ and I decided that the judges just really hate him for some reason and no matter how he sings, they think he's horrible. It's really annoying. And it's the exact opposite with David Archuleta. No matter how he sings, they praise him. I've gotten to the point where I just want to mute the judges after Jason and David A because it's the same thing every single week.