Helping Young Moms and Their Children {Service Hours for Kids}

Rachel is working towards earning the President's Volunteer Service Award so she is earning a lot of service hours this year.  We are always looking for ways for her to serve in the community.  Our church, Valley Creek, has created the Next Steps Center to partner with organizations and schools in the community to see how they can best serve the people in our area.

The Next Steps Center has reached out to a local Young Life group and found a way to make an impact in the lives of young moms and their children.  The Next Steps Center and Young Life bring about 50 young moms together for dinner and support at the center twice a month.  These moms range in age from 11 to 23 years old.  The Next Steps Center is also creating a Baby Needs store where the Young Life moms can shop for maternity items, baby clothes, big kid clothes, etc.  There are some new items but most of the items are gently used and offered to the moms for free.

The store is rather new.  This is a cute shot of the shopping area.  But they have received tons of bags and boxes of donated items that were just piled up in a spare room off to the side.  So Rachel and two of her friends from American Heritage Girls signed up to help sort the items.

They first sorted the items into 4 categories - girls winter, girls summer, boys winter, and boys summer.  Once that part was done, they went back through and sorted each category into sizes such as girls winter age 0-6 months, girls winter age 9-24 months, etc.

We were there for four hours but in the end the storage room looked so nice and organized!  Rachel felt good knowing that she helped to make this happen.

This experience was great for me too and I plan to reach out to see how I can help serve the Young Life moms on a regular basis when they come to the Next Steps Center.  What amazing things can happen when two great organizations like these come together to be the hands and feet of Jesus!

Valentine's Day Party on a Budget

I planned the Valentine's Day party for Rachel's AHG Explorers group.  We have a budget but I wanted to make things nice for the girls so I shopped at my favorite resource, Dollar Tree!  This place has some neat things that you can use creatively for all kinds of projects.  And everything in the store is just $1.00 each!

I got 2 red plastic table covers to make it festive...and to keep the markers from the art project from staining the church's tables ($2.00).  

I also got 2 bouquets of fake pink and white roses.  Each bouquet had 5 flowers on it ($2.00).  I pulled the flowers off the stems and just placed them in the center of each table as a centerpiece and then scattered some glitter hearts around the table ($1.00). 

Each of the girls were bringing Valentine's Day cards to share with their friends.  I thought about making little mail boxes for each of them but time was short so I just bought each of them a Valentine's Day gift bag.  They were $1.00 each and they were colorful and glittery.

I found lots of options for free Valentine's Day themed bingo games to print at home.  But we were going to have 17 girls playing so I needed 17 different bingo cards.  I ended up having to purchase a classroom set from Rosie's Superstars on the Teachers Pay Teachers site.  I love finding school resources there!  I printed the cards at home and then bought boxes of candy conversation hearts at Dollar Tree for the girls to use as bingo markers.  They loved snacking on their bingo markers!

We played several rounds on bingo.  The girls were then given a challenge to see how high they could stack their candy hearts.  Some made single file towers.  Others made pyramids like this one and other crazy creations.

Rachel was happy to just eat hers.

Of course candy hearts weren't the only snack.  The girls brought plenty of sweet treats to share with their friends.  What is a party without lots of sweets???

I also had the girls make a service project.  They made a May Basket paper craft that they could share with an elderly neighbor or anyone who needed cheering up.  I found the template at AlphaMom and used a few sheets of scrapbook paper that I already had.

The party was for 17 girls.  It included decorations, games, a craft, a service project, Valentine's Day goody bags, and treats for less than $30 out of our budget.  I do love Dollar Tree!

A Hockey and Beef Kind of Birthday

Stuart just had a birthday.  He's holding at 32 years.  

He is an amazing husband and an incredible dad to our two beautiful kids.  His parents, my parents, and I all pitched in to show him just how much we love and appreciate him.  He didn't give me anything for a wish list so we had to go out on a limb and guess what he might like.

We started the morning with gifts before he went to work.

He first opened the smaller gifts....some hockey stick tape, hockey drink coasters, and most importantly a new Dallas Stars blanket to keep in his car so he could finally give me back the blanket he stole from my car when he realized how brilliant I was for always having a blanket in my car.....

Then we let him open his nicer present.  New hockey gloves.  He had some used gloves that he had finally worn holes in the finger tips so it was time for new ones.  

Then we pulled out a bigger present from the closet.  He says he was stumped when he tried to figure out what it was.

He finally opened it and found a new hockey bag.  I was so glad to be able to get this for him.  It is so much nicer than the crummy old giant blue bag that he had to carry around on his shoulders packed full of gear and bumping into walls as he walked.  This one stands upright and has wheels!

On Wednesdays nights, I am at the hockey rink with the kids until 7:30 so Stuart cooks and has dinner ready for us when we get home.  But I didn't want him to cook on his birthday so we convinced him to try a new Brazilian Steakhouse in town called Carvao.  

I think it would be more appropriate to call it Meat Palace or something catchy like.  On the table each person has a little card that is green on one side and red on the other.  When the card is green, the servers will walk by and offer you various types of meat including beef, pork, lamb, and chicken that they will carve for you right at the table.  When you are stuffed, just turn the card to red and they will walk on by.

There is a salad bar as well but we didn't want to fill on on lettuce when these incredible meats were waiting for us.  My favorite was this Picanha which I believe is the house specialty.  

As the server carves, you use your tongs to hold the slices as they are cut.  The kids had a great time with this.

Stuart, we hope you had a wonderful birthday.  We love you!

Salvation Army: Feeding Those in Need

Our church, Valley Creek, provides lunch on the first Sunday of every month to the homeless and those in need at the Lewisville Salvation Army's Soup Kitchen.  Rachel and I signed up to bring a family size Stouffer's lasagna and to serve.

The Salvation Army serves free lunch regularly during the week with their own volunteers but churches and other organization can help fill the gaps on the weekends.

We helped to set up the food line and we served people as they came through.  Once they were seated we went back around to see if they needed more water or wanted a cookie for dessert.  

We also took a tour of the facilities and learned more about all that this local Salvation Army office does for the community.  They provide free lunch, shower facilities, clothing, toiletries, and Bibles.

They also have a small food pantry where they give out Bags of Love full of food for people in need.  Rachel has spent a few hours working on decorating their bags with pretty pictures and inspirational words to brighten the recipient's day.

They also provide some vocational rehabilitation and referrals to help get people back on their feet.  We first had contact with the Salvation Army back during the 1000 Year Flood in south Louisiana when Stuart's parents' house flooded.  We were there removing wet belongings and soaked sheet rock and the Salvation Army was the first group to bring a hot meal to us.  They are such a blessing to the communities they serve.

Anne of Green Gables

For a fun read aloud in our homeschool, we have been reading Anne of Green Gables (*affiliate link). The book was written in 1908 by L.M. Montgomery.  It is a children's classic but I had never read it.  We all enjoyed it.  It is about an 11 year old little orphan girl who seems to have a knack for getting herself into trouble.  We took several months to finish it.  I read aloud to them and at the end of each chapter they would take turns narrating to me what had happened and then tell me their thoughts on the story.  Unfortunately, we didn't have time in our schedule to read it on a regular basis like I would have liked.  We would have gotten through it more quickly if I had but that's ok.  It worked out perfectly because we finished it up just as the Artisan Center Theater was producing their Anne of Green Gables play!

As a special treat, we were able to get tickets for a weekend performance so Daddy was able to come with us.  He doesn't usually get to come on homeschool field trips with us so this made it especially fun.

The performance was great!  I may have gotten teary a time or two.  Afterwards Rachel was excited to get to meet the girl who played Anne.

We are working on picking out our next read aloud book.  There are just so many great books I want them to read!!!  We love reading aloud together.  It's a great way to experience the story together and we enjoy being able to discuss it and share in the excitement together.  For a great resource for inspiration for reading aloud with your family and even some great booklists, check out Sarah MacKenzie's Read Aloud Revival site.  

*This post contains an affiliate link to Amazon.  If you purchase the Anne of Green Gables book through this link I will get a very small payment that just goes to pay for this blog.  It will not affect the cost you pay for the book.