MLK, Jr. Day Community Service

Another community service project that Olivia took part in was on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day at High Point University. The students and faculty organized a drive to package ready-to-cook meals for disaster relief. They had several tables set up to assemble the meals in bags, which were then heat-sealed and boxed up. The meals were a simple pasta meal with soy protein and powdered sauce, so that all it needed was boiling water to be made. 

 Olivia spent 2 hours doing various jobs like weighing and heat-sealing the bags. 

 All together they made over 5000 individual meals!

Neighborhood Cleanup - Olivia's AHG Service

As Part of American Heritage Girls, Olivia has to fulfill requirements for various badges and do 15 hours of community service each year. One of the requirements of her Caring for the Environment badge was to organize a neighborhood cleanup. 

Our neighborhood is a little too big to do a full neighborhood cleanup, so instead we cleaned up all the public area around our block, which is a pretty significant area. Olivia made up flyers and distributed them to all the neighbors, but sadly, nobody else made it.

  That didn't stop us, though. We went out for an hour and a half and cleaned up the park areas and along the creeks and roads. Everybody did such a great job!

In the end, we filled 3 full trash bags plus some random things like a pilates ball, a campaign sign and a really nasty couch cushion that had been thrown in the creek. 

Happy Birthday, Emma!

Our sweet girl Emma turned 6! 

With everything we have on our plates, we didn't plan a party for her this time, but all she asked for was a colorful cake. :) She originally said a tie-dye cake, but I wasn't sure I could make it work. Instead, Rebecca sent me a link to a YouTube video that showed how to make a watercolor cake.

 Turns out that wasn't so hard. :) She loved it, for which I'm very happy. 

 Her highlight of the day was getting to walk through Party City and pick out a big balloon. We did have an eye doctor's appointment that morning which we told her was just for her special day, but she didn't think that was really a party, even though it's quite an event for all of us to take over the doctor's office for an hour. :)

The thing she's most excited about is that she now gets to go to the "big kids'" class at church, which is for 6-10 year olds. 

We're proud of our little girl and can't wait to see what the next year has in store for her (and us!)

Cold Snap

It's been brutally cold here for the last few days. Getting outside has been almost painful with the temps being below freezing even during the warmest part of the day. Despite their complaints, we bundled the kids up and took them to the Bicentennial Greenway for a walk along the creek. 

  There were some really cool spots where the creek had frozen. There was even this spot that had ice thick enough to support the kids walking on it. The place was maybe 6 inches deep and I'm pretty sure it was actually frozen solid. 

 It was frozen enough to support even me!  

 This is something that rarely happens here, so it was cool for the kids to get to experience something like this. 

It's a Brand New Car!

Ok... Not BRAND new... but new to us anyway. With the end of the year closing in, we decided to pull the trigger and get Rebecca a new car. Our beloved 2003 Mazda Protege5 had taken us over 230,000 miles (that's about the distance to the moon!) over the past 13 years and was slowly dying a painful death as various bits and pieces broke or stopped working on it. Rebecca has been pondering what vehicle she'd like to get over the past couple of months...

 and while this is her dream, it's not very practical... So instead she settled on this:

a 2010 Nissan Versa. Sadly, we couldn't find one in our price range in blue that was in decent condition, so we had to go with silver, but still... It's a cute car and one that we're happy with so far. It rides and runs great and we are so happy to have a solidly reliable car for her! We're looking forward to a good 10 years with this one!