December 5, 2011

Today our 4H group got together and created greeting cards. There was a county workshop for the same thing but not enough space for all our group to attend so we just decided to have our own. I've been a scrapbooker for quite some time and had plenty of supplies to donate. The kids had a blast. They all made six cards. They kept three of them and the other three were donated to the Senior Companions program. They kids did a great job and had a lot of fun.

Day #57/175 Days

Day #165/175 Days - Community Service

I haven't been tracking all the things we do for Community Service, but I felt that this opportunity needed to count. A few years ago I was a part of our local MOPS Group (Mothers of Preschoolers) but I soon "graduated out." We then did a homeschool co-op for a bit, but that proved to be too much for us at the time. We are revisiting it for the future.

A call went out that they would be short workers for the last two MOPS meetings so the boys & I volunteered. Okay, so I volunteered the boys and we all headed in to help out. Conductor and Lego-Man helped with the MOPPETS (ages 2 to 6) and Happy & I hung out in the nursery.

The first week was pretty small. We had about five workers (not counting Happy) and only four babies. Needless to say that was a relatively easy week.

Today we had quite a few more as it was a "regular" MOPS week. (The previous week was a MOPS Bible study.) We had about 6-7 workers this week and a dozen babies. Overall it was great for Happy to be in there helping with me. I know he would have rather helped with the MOPPETS but too many of his friends come with younger siblings so I knew it wouldn't be a "helping" situation for him. It was in the nursery.

Lego-Man and Conductor arrived back sweaty and tired each week so I know they worked and played hard helping the little ones have a good time while their moms enjoyed some "kid-free/adult-only" chatting.

Day #157/175 Days - Community Service

All of my boys are in a local 4-H club in our county. We started it last year and so far we've really enjoyed it. We've learned so much and had a number of great opportunities occur that we normally wouldn't be able to do.

Right now our club is heading up a county-wide fundraiser. We are putting together a cookbook of recipes in order to sell it to raise money. However, the printing costs were rather high. I think the number I heard was $700 for 250 cookbooks.

In order to bring in more money for the Leader Association which in turn puts on activities and off-sets costs for the kids in groups, we decided to look for sponsors. One day last week the boys & I went out and were able to gather a handful. However, today we spent the entire afternoon.

The deal was they had to each speak at each business. I would fill in the details but they had to start. A number of people thanked me for having the boys there and seeing them work for this project. While asking for money is not my favorite thing, I think this is a good skill for the boys to have.

The final result was that we needed at least 70 sponsors at $15 each to completely pay for the cookbook. The final total on Thursday afternoon was over 80. All the extra money will just stay in the leaders fund. We also had about 40 businesses pre-buy a copy of the cookbook.

I can't wait to see the final results when it comes out in August!